blog:

by Heidi Miget on 5.13.2010 in Interactive Marketing, Marketing Consulting 0

Email Marketing…I will be the first to admit it may not sound as exciting to talk about as Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare but give me a few minutes and I’ll explain why I think it should be.

• Email is the marketing channel paying the bills. According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), email marketing currently receives a return on investment of $43.5 for every $1 spent. That’s the highest ROI out of any digital channel available today – twice the return earned by other marketing channels.

• Powerful tracking for targeted sends. Do you only want to send an offer to your most loyal customers?  With advanced email marketing software, you can use tracking capabilities to find which customers are consistently opening your emails and clicking on your links, and then send them a special offer as a “thank you” for their loyalty.  This is just one example that demonstrates how email marketing allows you to collect data on your subscribers and use that data to send more powerful and targeted emails based on what you learn.

• Quick turn-around time. Sure, it may not be as easy as turning to Twitter and creating a 140 character update about your exciting announcement, but what about those messages that are longer than 140 characters? What if your announcement is intended for only a certain group of customers or dynamic messaging is needed?  Then email is probably your answer.  Email is an ideal outlet to turn to for quickly delivering a customized message to a targeted audience. With email, you’re on your own schedule (as opposed to editorial calendars and advertising slots) and you have direct access to send out last minute announcements.

• Endless possibilities. At Brighton, our email platform of choice is Exact Target, named a leader in email marketing by Forrester Research in 2009* With the Exact Target software, the capabilities go further than powerful customized emails. Their software is a “digital hub” for communications that allows us the ability to integrate digital solutions including SMS, CRM platforms, social media and third party analytical data.  This is essential for an email platform to offer a wide variety of options because as we all know, no 2 client solutions are the same so it’s essential to have a platform as dynamic as our client’s challenges.

• The numbers tell it all. According to eMarketer, from 2006 to 2011 alone, US e-mail marketing spending went up $225 million, and US e-mail advertising increased by more than $278 million.  These figures also coincide with the growing percentage of e-mail users in the US, which increased from 31 million to 194 million during the same time period—proving, once again, that the prevalence and importance of e-mail is definitely on the rise.

These are really just a few of the many reasons why email should be a top consideration for any digital marketing communications plan. At first glance, it may seem like a basic approach with all of the new technology available to us today.  However, when it really comes down to it, email does a great job of utilizing and leveraging these new technologies, and provides marketers the tools needed to deliver timely, relevant and useful email information.

*Brighton is an authorized Exact Target reseller, with expertise in installation and maintenance of Exact Target, while also helping clients save money with volume discounts.

• Tweet