Marketing Trenches

It’s been exactly 3 months since the  October 12, 2009 Wall Street Journal article Why Email No Longer Rules…And what that means for the way we communicate touched off a mini-firestorm in the marketing world.  This article wasn’t the first on the topic but really more of a culmination.  It seems for much of 2008 and 2009 there were many similar articles, in newspapers, industry pubs, blogs, etc.  And yet, if my inbox since then, the back-end analytics results we see, and the accompanying graph from Forrester Research here are indicators –- The rumors of email’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Before we get too far, let’s start with a couple numbers.  According to The Direct Marketing Association’s Power of Direct Report, Email marketing continues to demonstrate the highest ROI of all direct marketing channels, including search.  According to the report, email returned $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. While that is down $1.31 from 2008, it still far outpaces the ROI of PPC search advertising, which with an ROI of $21.85 is the next most effective.

So what does this mean to you?  Well if you have read anything on Marketing Trenches you’ll know that I’m probably going to work the word strategy into this post a half dozen times before I’m through (OK, maybe that is a slight exaggeration).  But, email deserves strong consideration as a part of that strategy.  Notice I say a part, because your other components are critical as well, and the most successful approaches are truly integrated.

Instead of choosing one channel over another because it has the highest surveyed ROI metrics, look at ways to use these together.  As an example, many of the top Email Service Providers (ESPs) offer Share With Your Network (SWYN) features now, integrating social network sharing tools into your email marketing.  If you aren’t working with a top ESP right now you should be – the half a penny you may save on a send just isn’t worth what you are sacrificing.

From an integrated marketing perspective, your email subscriber base and ROI from that base is likely to grow when you are using marketing channels like search (both Paid and Organic/SEO), social media and other online and offline marketing in a more holistic, integrated way, reaching your prospects and customers in multiple places and increasing your overall marketing ROI.

With the recent flip of the calendar, now is as good a time as any to reevaluate how email fits into your interactive and overall marketing plan.  Because trust me, email is alive and kicking.

What are your recent experiences with email marketing?  I’d love for you to add them in the comments below.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow@willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

When I explain our business to people, I immediately get hit with questions.  And I love questions — it shows people are paying attention, interested and engaged (or at least somewhat good at pretending to be).  So questions are always good.  Sometimes what I hear, though, is somebody really looking for us to confirm a myth for them.  A few of those questions seem to come up time and time again and are easy to spot.  Here my Top 5 right now:

1). Why should we be on Twitter?  I don’t care what you had for breakfast.

Well sure, I don’t care what I had for breakfast either, or probably what anyone else had for breakfast.  Just like any other communications or content channel, there are folks using this channel well and some using it not so well.  We have already published a few posts on good ways you might use Twitter already (Read more on Measuring Social Media ROI, and on Five Ways Professional Services Firms Can Use Twitter) so I won’t go into detail here again.  But, just keep in mind most of the same people who think Twitter is about telling people what you had for breakfast thought bloggers were just a bunch of people living in their parents’ basement and would never have an impact.

2). I should just put my whole marketing budget in PPC search, that will be my most effective marketing right?

Maybe – but it really depends on your marketing objectives, industry, goals, products, services, and everything else.  PPC Search is great for many businesses, but it usually isn’t a magic bullet, but rather part of an overall plan.  Often we find PPC is a testing ground for a more informed Search Engine Optimization (Read more on The Obvious Yet Underused Way to Build an SEO Program)  and that we run the two together, or that PPC search doesn’t meet your goals.  My advice – Never put all your eggs in one basket.

3). Why should we have our marketing team do anything with Social Media?  We have an intern here that can get us up to speed.

I seem to be hearing this one more and more often now.  While your intern may be ahead of you on the social media front because he/she has more friends than you do on Facebook, that doesn’t mean they are the right person to handle strategic marketing.  Having extra help in managing your online presences is great – indeed it can be time intensive — but make sure you have the right strategy and a plan in place that you can then engage people (including maybe the intern) in helping to execute.  And, like with anything else – Make sure you bring in the right help to generate that plan if you aren’t equipped to do it yourself.

4). Why would I use landing pages for our campaigns?  That’s why my website has a home page.

We’ve talked about when you should use a landing page vs. a microsite in more detail before (read Microsite or Landing Page?), but it’s important to understand a landing page can speak to a specific audience and ask for specific actions, while your home page by nature has to be much more general in nature.  Utilize landing pages for campaigns when appropriate rather than pushing everything to the home page and your conversion rates will increase.

5). I just need to reach a bunch of people, can’t I just buy an email list?

(Preparing for backlash from list brokers…awaiting angry emails…OK, let’s go)

In all my experience I have never seen a client have great success with a “bought” or “rented” list.  There are opportunities to engage folks via email, but where I have seen success is in mailing to those that have truly, clearly opted in to hear from you, and from placements in relevant emails that follow this same principle.  Your results may vary, but if nothing else you are tempting fate on a huge spam backlash, blacklisting, etc.  I think you are most likely to be successful with many other strategies and tactics before this one.

What are the misconceptions you run into most frequently?  Feel free to submit your own in our comments section below

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  Follow Will on Twitter for more commentary like this.

Content is king from a marketing standpoint - now more than ever.  Can you really market anything without some form of content?  Think about it for a second.  Review every marketing vehicle you use, and try to identify one that doesn’t involve some form of content production.

If content is king, then what is the king’s most important weapon?  Another easy answer.  Writing.  And it’s not even close.

Writing is one of the most undervalued pieces of the marketing puzzle.

Let’s do a quick review of some marketing vehicles and how poor writing impacts each:

• Press Release: Don’t even write it if you’re not going to do it professionally.  Journalists and your consumer/business audience will stop reading when they hit the first piece of evidence of poor writing.

• Website: You know that rule, the one that says you have 10-15 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention and convince them to dive further into the site?  You know what can expedite that departure time?  Poor writing.

• SEO: Writing is far more important for SEO than most “experts” are willing to admit.  Here’s one simple reason.  Let’s say you rank #1 on an important keyword, but your meta description tag (the one that smart people read to determine whether your site is relevant to the topic) is too long, which is often the case.  Fewer clicks.  Fewer leads.  Decreased ROI from that SEO effort.

Let’s check out an example.  When I search on “copywriting” on Google, here are two description tags associated with top 10 results:

Tag #1: “Copywriting advice for bloggers and online marketers.”

In case you’re wondering, this is an effective description tag, which happens to belong to a very popular marketing blog.  No surprise.

Tag #2: “Blues icon BB King was once asked how he found his heart-warming, bone-chilling sound. It’s simple, he said. I only steal from the best. After.”

This may lead me to a very cool article or blog post, but doesn’t matter.  I’m not clicking because I don’t understand how this description is relevant to my search query.

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