According to a recent study by eMarketer, the majority of college students pay little or no attention to marketing emails. However, email still remains their second- most preferred way to communicate, after text messaging. While this study mainly applies to college students, it got me thinking of the importance of relevance in messaging.
The deluge of marketing emails hitting inboxes ,paired with unrelenting spam, makes it hard for messages to get through to the brand audience – as we can see from the survey above. Taking the reins of your email marketing today can mean increased attention to your brand for generations to come. Not doing so means losing the very generation that email should be able to reach. Action has to be taken by all email marketers out there, to ensure that good marketing gets through.
The solution to effective email marketing , according to many companies and consultants in the field: Relevance. This word is often spoken, but the confusion lies in it being defined in too many ways. For some, relevance is equated to proper segmentation; for others it may involve dynamic content; and still others may focus on data collection and metrics as a key factor in achieving relevance. Before even considering email relevance, the first thing you should do is take inventory on attitudes in your organization about your email marketing itself.
Email marketing is well-known for its ROI, and as a relatively inexpensive channel, is often and easily abused. Looking at email as a channel where you can unload a mass of messages for quick impact to your bottom line would be cheating yourself. Email is not just randomized contact on a mass scale- it directly touches an individual on the other end, and can have a major impact on how your brand is recalled. Think of the brands whose emails you receive everyday: Google, Apple, Amazon\”¦ which ones do you read?
Learn more about email relevance\”¦stay tuned next week!
Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous 2009!
Shaneli Ramratan, Director of Marketing, mobileStorm
Be sure to personalize your emails when responding to your prospects. Some companies are spending way too much money on creating complex html emails when all they need to do is create a few templates that are short and look hand typed. You can even misspell a couple words. Believe it or not it will get read more. People like to know a person just emailed them, not a department.