The State of Email Marketing from Ad:Tech San Francisco 2007

My takeaway from a session on Email Marketing:

Despite all the rumors: Email marketing isn't dead. [makes me happy since we have a burgeoning practice around email marketing]

In spite of all the woes of SPAM filters, stuffed inboxes, and inundation with information, email is still a valuable component in the marketing quiver.  Email alone is not as powerful as the mix of components such as: landing pages, conversion pages, subscription pages, etc.  Best practices in email assume the same things any of your marketing components...OPTIMIZATION is key. 

Firing into the abyss with any single component will always have limited success.  The more consistent messages, delivered in the most relevant and frequent means that match your target, will produce the best results (novel idea, i know.).

Here are a few bullets on the state of email from the Ad:Tech San Francisco floor:

• VALIDATED SENDERS - Gaining strength but still not main stream  List hygiene and using a good email provider can greatly help with your deliverability and consumer trust
• Deliverability should be in the high-90% range
• Images are being turned off by default for many ISPs and Outlook 2007.  Need to make messages pretty for text as well.  Also need to account for that fact that your open rates will be lower simply because images are set to off.
• Optimize subscription management landing page.
• Co-reg is still good
• Frequency is dependent on audience...only message as you need to.
• most are doing email - landing - conversion
• Most all have an agency handling creative and message craft, then distribution is internal, tracking internal
• All are re-engaging with their aging lists
• product specials work less than good information
• Headcount in email is typically 1-3 internal, 3-5 external

Of course it is always reassuring to know that Fuze's MessgeCenter systems are still state of the art in terms of data collection, message craft, and statistical analysis.  Do you use them?  You really should.  Call us!

WBV

(another treo post - sorry for the typos)