Don't Call It a Comeback: Why Email Marketing Still Matters

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." – Mark Twain

There's been some chatter around the Web in recent years about the looming death of email at the hands of social media.

Scandalous as it sounds, though, many of us wouldn't mind seeing our bulging inboxes go away. The Telegraph recently highlighted a study connecting email to stress at work. Not surprisingly, participant stress levels spiked at points in the day when inboxes were fullest. Shocking revelation, right?

But whether the thought of email extinction unsettles or elates you, a closer look at its role in our work and lives reveals that the reports of email's death are greatly exaggerated.

State of the union email address

Social media may be doing the heavy lifting when it comes to sharing our lives, but email remains a valued, private and protected channel for conducting life and business online.

We use email to keep up with the brands, organizations and communities we care about through e-newsletters, news alerts, daily deals, group activity digests, etc.

We use it to conduct business online, such as registration for services, support requests, banking e-statements and payment confirmations. You can even get receipts emailed to you from the registers of many brick-and-mortar retailers now.

Ironically, even social media is using email to keep us engaged. How often do you receive notifications from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the lot about new followers, daily/weekly activity digests, new comments on conversations and suggestions for new connections?

Marketer's know the inbox is alive and well, and they're still pumping out white papers and webinars about email marketing. Email service providers like Constant Contact and MailChimp—and a half-dozen others—are still thriving.

Email still matters because it is so closely connected to our identities and our lives. It's less transient than social media. People delete their accounts—ask Facebook after a privacy policy change. Social sites rise and fall in popularity—last year it was Pinterest, this year Instagram. Some professionals hardly check their LinkedIn accounts. But nearly everyone online has an email account that they check regularly and some of us have had a particular address for 10, 15, and nearly 20 years.

So if email is closely connected to who we are as people, it's important that we as business growers frame email marketing efforts in this light. Forget open rates, click throughs, bounce rates, etc. for just a moment and let's focus on three keys to connecting with customers in their inboxes.

Key #1: Relationship

By signing up to receive your emails, customers are inviting you into their inbox—a personal space. They "opt-in" in faith that you will deliver value and not abuse the privilege.

This transaction of trust is as important as the ones involving money. Your email recipients are in fact customers even if they've never spent a penny on your products or services. They are paying for your email content with their time and attention.

Unfortunately, many businesses today don't understand (or ignore) this relationship dynamic and treat email like direct mail, using "spray and pray" tactics—"I've got a message to get out and a database full of email addresses. Let's do this!"

If you "e-blast" your customers, by the way, you may be guilty of this kind of marketing terrorism.

As customers welcome you into their inboxes, treat them with respect. Give them value. Be a guest they'll want to come back again and again. Essentially, don't be self-centered or rude.

Ultimately, the key to building relationships with your customers through email is the Golden Rule.  Email as you would want to be emailed.

Key #2: Content

Email marketing is content marketing ...  And the first key to great email content is to give subscribers what they want.

Give 'em what they want

If you offer multiple email subscription options for your customers—for example deals, company news, e-newsletters, etc.—then honor their wishes. If all I want is deals, don't send me your press releases.

If you don't segment your email content like this and basically have one big mailing list, then it's important to actively get feedback from subscribers to determine what types of content they're interested in—and how often want to get it, but more on that later. Consider polling your list once or twice a year to see which features they like best. Or better yet, make your emails "reply-able" and end them with a question like "How can we improve the content of our emails for you?" This type of engagement with the reader make the email more of a two-way conversation.

To increase trust and interest earlier, at the email sign-up form, make it clear what customers will be getting by subscribing. The more clarity you provide the more comfortable and more emotionally invested they will be.

Be interesting

It may sound obvious, but make it a priority to have something interesting to say or share with subscribers. Give them a reason to keep reading.

NextDraft is an an email newsletter published daily by Dave Pell in which Dave simply currates news from all over the web and delivers "The day's most fascinating news" right to your inbox. His description of NextDraft is better than any I could offer:

Each morning I visit about fifty news sites and from that swirling nightmare of information quicksand, I pluck the top ten most fascinating items of the day, which I deliver with a fast, pithy wit that will make your inbox vibrate with delight...

Imagine this: You'll actually look forward to email again. It's totally free and almost no one ever unsubscribes. The subscription form is up there, just a few pixels away. Go ahead. Give your inbox some awesome.

Just as captivating as the 10 intriguing stories Dave highlights each day is the smart writing he uses to set up each story and string them all together.  Here's a sample:

Put a little art in their inbox

I always open emails from Berlin-based software firm 6Wunderkinder because they are the most beautifully designed ones in my inbox. Great design is core to the 6Wunderkinder brand and products, and this commitment carries over into their email, which always look great and announce something worth reading about. Here's a recent sample from my inbox:

You don't have to be a design firm or developer to put together attractive html-based emails. Most email services providers have templates with drag-and-drop customization. But ... HTML-based email can be a little tricky in the ways it's rendered by various email software, so if in doubt, it's probably better to get some professional help.

Customize content to show you care

A growing trend in the email marketing world is email personalization, serving up different types of content to customers based demographics like location, sex or age as well as cues from their interactions with the brand or where they are in the sales pipeline. Personalization increases the value of your emails by providing content that fits more closely with customers interests and other characteristics.

For example, IKEA is a global brand, so the emails I get from their loyalty program, IKEA Family, are specific to my local store in Charlotte—not Stockholm.  In the example below, they even offer a deal in collaboration with the local minor league baseball team, the Knights. And local store information—location, hours, and contact info—is included at the bottom.

While this level of personalization involves some pretty robust marketing software, businesses without such resources can still tailor messages to specific groups of readers by segmenting their email lists through criteria like geographic location. Additionally, the major email service providers do offer some basic tools for email personalization. Just remember that the goal of any customization is to deliver a better, more personalized email experience to your customers.

Key #3: Frequency

A recent marketing study conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit and Lyris, asked participants, "In your opinion, what frustrates you most about companies’ use of online communications?" Eighty percent of respondents chose "Too many unwanted email messages," outpacing the second place option by more than thirty points.

Most of us have grown accustomed to the tidal wave of information that is social media, so we're used to ignoring a lot of it. But email has to be managed. We generally touch each piece of mail, much in the same way as postal mail for centuries past. So the motivation here is to send only enough mail to provide value to subscribers, without being associated with inbox burnout.

Research by Eloqua shows that a judicious frequency of emails sent isn't just good for the customer, it's good for campaign performance. In essence, it appears from the chart below that when it comes to getting customers to email marketing that gets results, less is more.

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The Web Marketing Universe

Confusion about successful web marketing is rampant. Even for those in marketing, there's an ongoing war to maintain clarity about how the web universe works and how successful web marketing is executed today. Building an outperforming web platform is very much like building and running a retail store whose primary objective is providing a product or service.

• The store must be attractive, have a good location and be unique to attract visitors.
• The store’s layout, personnel and operations must serve the customer and make the sales process as easy as possible.
• The experience must promote the visitor to return to the store.
• The experience must transform the visitor into a customer.
• The experience must provoke visitors to tell others.
• The experience must promote customers to become repeat customers.

And while the foundational recipe for a successful website is very similar, getting there is completely different. Life happens faster online. While visitors peruse a physical store, website visitors “use” an online store. They can leave just as easily as they walked in. Their attention spans are much shorter, and their tolerance for a confusing layout or arduous pathways is low. There are no roads leading to the Internet storefront. The idea of “getting there” is completely different. The straightforward “location, location, location” mantra is replaced with a myriad of new approaches and considerations to gain the foot traffic you need to be successful online. So, from the never-ending minutia of terminology, buzzwords and techno-jargon, let’s clear the air for once and get some things straight about what makes a successful web marketing machine.

Metrics

Before anything is done, before the first photo is taken, before the first line of code is written, you must take account of what you know. In the web world, everything is in the numbers. From the unaware prospect to the loyal return customer, all possibilities and measurements must be mapped out within the sales continuum. Where do your customers come from? How much does the average customer spend with you in a year? How much is spent to gain one customer? What has your past advertising and marketing efforts yielded? Who are your repeat customers? Why do customers come back? Why do customers leave? Are you doing everything you can to measure all elements that directly and indirectly affect sales? There is much inventory and soul-searching in identifying your metrics. You must be honest about what you know and what you don’t know. You must be critical and able to grade yourself. Doing the homework here will not only guide the purpose of all your web marketing efforts, but also allows you to measure your return on investment, make adjustments and out-perform your competitors.

Utility

In the vastness of the Internet, there are two classes of websites: the digital brochure and the utility site. Most websites are the first kind––the online equivalent of a printed flyer. Yup, all the computing processors, memory, software, hardware, power and communication lines for people to read the same information that they would get from a brochure. The brochure site states its case, makes its pitch and then its done. That’s what many companies do with their brands on the Internet, and their website’s performance is a reflection of it. Your website needs to be useful, not just informative about your primary business objective. Many websites waste inordinate amounts of time and money promoting a site with no utility. Its visitors see no reason to return, and it dies right there. The precious opportunity to turn a casual visitor into a return visitor—the web version of true branding—is sadly wasted. Your website needs to find its place on the Internet. It needs to be known for something. Awareness and traffic on the web is cumulative, and all the time used to gain a visitor is wasted if the site is not worth bookmarking, sharing, remembering or revisiting. To achieve this, you must be prepared to invest in your site’s utility. You must have an offering to the public at large, without the visitor needing to be a customer. Your website needs to find its place on the Internet. It needs to be known for something.If you sell lawn fertilizer, offer a lawn care calendar for the visitor’s geographical area, e-mail alerts on care stages, free weekly lawn care tips and write a regular article. Create a place the visitor can count on, all the while promoting your brand and selling your product or service. Comparative shopping listings, mortgage amortization calculators, games, a “rare word of the day” and “your lawn care tip of the week” are all beginnings of utility for a website. If your competitors are already introducing utility in their online store fronts and developing a reputation for having a website that’s worth returning to, then you have something to worry about. Don’t wait until then. Up the ante and don’t waste another visit to your site.

Content

Many times the utility of a good website resides in the content it offers. Now this is where many websites have an identity problem. Most view their website’s static “brochure” text regarding their product or service as the website’s content. It isn’t. Content has purpose and application to the visitor beyond your primary offering. It may not apply to everyone, but it needs to be content that your audience wants to read, see, play, view, hear and interact with. Content has been and always will be king. As a result, the content maker is king. Believe it or not, writers are usually the single most important factor to the successful website core. If your website features piano playing tips in video form, then the video producer owns the role of king. Don’t regard your website as a one-time sales pitch. Invest in content and the long-term rewards will be exponential.

The idea

The challenge of utility and content represents the stage where the good idea is born. If your website doesn’t present any reason for a visitor to return, then it’s useless. Your website’s success is based on its core concept. What is it going to offer people? What is its reputation going to be? What about your content is going to make people talk about it, forward its web address, bookmark it, share it and most important, what is going to make people come back to it? This is where a good web development firm shines. The responsibility of your web development firm is to make sure the idea around your utility and content is sound and executable. Web professionals work hard to stay abreast of what the Internet landscape—and all competitors—provide. They know what people want, what’s lacking, where the opportunities are and where to drill for maximum gain.

Presentation

You’ve got your idea, you’ve found your niche, you’re creating great content––now we can talk about building a beautiful and functional website. Crafting a superstar website is its own discipline. Professionals that build memberable websites master a craft that is like no other. Once again, the Internet’s vast array of possibilities and potential are the reason so much more must be considered. Take, for example, reading a magazine. The magazine contains a catalog of content. It employs the simple interface of a table of contents, page numbers and the action of turning the pages—that’s it. In contrast, a website has multiple dimensions and depth. It does more than display your content—it’s functional. It stores content, catalogs it and queries it. It reacts. It allows for conversation and builds community. Your 24-hour Internet house is, in short, a working engine that must reflect your brand proudly, be functional and easy-to-use and run itself without you in the room. Your website is a working engine that must reflect your brand proudly, be functional and easy-to-use and run itself without you in the room. But with great power comes great responsibility—in design and function. It’s very much like building a unique, first-of-a-kind car from the ground up, combining art and precise engineering into a beautiful, functioning machine. There is a metric ton of considerations in any given website, right down to the psychology of choice. As a result, there are many amateur web designers, but very few great web builders. Still, many companies rely on traditional marketing agencies who see web development akin to the linear development of print material, television commercials or radio spots [see our article on the fall of traditional marketing companies]. In other cases, some companies employ a single individual––usually a programmer or a designer––to build a competitive website that in reality requires experts from many disciplines. Both of these extreme approaches to web building leave a trail of failed websites littered around the Internet landscape. The memorable and over-performing website requires a unique and specific combination of expertise from an array of web professionals, all working in concert on the details and all joined together on the big picture. That doesn’t mean you need teams of people working around the clock, but you will need portions of their knowledge and interactive specialties to craft it the right way the first time. In fact, the right way costs less upfront and makes your investment that much more powerful.

Traffic Building

You’ve established a good foundation with your web marketing strategy and metrics; you’ve got an online building that’s both beautiful and very useful; now the focus turns to building foot traffic. While the traffic building plan is part of the web marketing strategy, its execution is on an ongoing basis. The exact strategies and tactics for traffic building are different for each business, brand, product or service, and covering all the possibilities would be beyond the scope of this article. Effective traffic building, however, depends on one key element: the relation of a website’s utility and content to the community at large. Food for thought: In the beginning, you will start with any traffic. However, the public does reside with other websites. Those other websites have provided a platform for community. There are an endless number of online communities on everything from aardvarks to zucchini that people bookmark, remember and participate in––weekly, daily, hourly. You need to be there too. Identify those spots and begin participating in them. Be real and helpful. Promote your brand when appropriate, and promote your personality in the process. Link to some of your good content. Extend an offer outside your primary objective. Create and build a reputation. Again, there’s more to this than a simple example can convey. Simply put, there must be regular engagement with the public outside of your website. People engage with companies through the best form of advertising: word-of-mouth. The Internet just sets that on fire.

Visitor-to-Customer Conversion

The science and art of converting a visitor into a customer is unique to each web marketing plan. It begins with identifying, marking and sometimes even coding-in conversion points within the site. Conversion points can be the creation of an account, the point at which a product is sold, the submission of a contact form or the making of an appointment. The array of possible conversions are unique to the business; however, they tie directly to the bottom line. This is where the experienced web development agency brings metrics back into play. All efforts in traffic building and advertising are mapped; traffic from websites, search engines and other sources are cataloged; traffic is tracked to conversion points within the site; analysis is taken and actions to improve traffic and the rates of conversion are continuously implemented. Such complexity is beyond the expertise of traditional marketing firms or the one-man-band.

Getting Started - The Big Picture

Yes, at first glance this is a lot to take in. That’s why it’s important to interview your marketing firm to make sure they not only recognize the web marketing universe, but that can also execute on it and show results. We’re here to help. Call or write us. We promise to answer all of your questions in a straightforward manner and help you understand it all. If you’re already engaged or under contract with another firm, at least ask your firm—and yourself—the tough questions:

• What is the plan?
• Why will people come to your website?
• What will keep visitors coming back?
• What will make visitors tell others?
• What will convert visitors to customers?
• How is it performing?

And most of all: What will make people fans of your website? This is ultimately the goal of any web marketing campaign, and it's indicative of any superstar website. From local dentists to international corporate brands, anyone can reach the apex of online marketing, win more customers and gain market share for less money. Remember: fans do the marketing for you.

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