Thursday 16 October 2008

How Do You Know Your Email is Working?

I recently wrote an article for the DMA's Infobox Email Newsletter in which I suggested that the current credit crunch would help move the email to the channel to the next level. Email really came into its own during the dotcom bust. The dotcoms were early adopters of the email channel but instead of email flaming out with the dotcoms, there was a huge library of case studies that sold the channel to the non-dotcoms.
I then went on to state that this credit crunch will force marketers to better segment their lists because finance directors are going to expect increasingly higher return on investment. In addition, marketers are realising that as email address penetration tops out they are all competing for the same static number of readers. This will result in an increase in the cost of acquisition for opt-ins, so it is important that marketers keep as many of their readers engaged as possible. Better targeting equates to increased relevance which leads to increased engagement.

So today I read an eMarketer article about a MarketingSherpa survey. Not surprisingly, email marketers that think email is becoming more effective will spend more money on it and email marketers that think email is becoming less effective try to keep email as close to free as possible.

The part that bothered me was the group that responded with "e-mail is cheap and still working-why invest more?" Didn't these people read my article? Maybe it didn't get much take-up in the US.

Actually, I think it is down to how these marketers are measuring their email programs. By focusing only on the process metrics of delivery, open, and click rates it is hard to see when large segment of your population becomes disengaged with your email program. By looking however, at the performance metrics like engagement, sales, return on investment, you get a much better picture of whether your email program is working. I have yet to find a client that is in the business of generating clicks. Every client I have ever worked with, was in the business of generating sales. That should be the only indicator of whether an email program is working.

Monday 6 October 2008

Upcoming DMA Events

At Logo

I have posted two new links in the upcoming events section. I am chairing the first and it should be a spirited discussion about changes to internet security and the impact this will have on digital marketing channels.


The second is the Email Marketing Councils second big conference of the year. There is a new format a lot of new content and some great speakers. Unfortunately, I was not able to make the cut and get on the speakers list for this one so I am looking for a guess pass if anybody has an extra.

Thursday 2 October 2008

We Now Resume Normal Service

Earlier today it was pointed out to me that I have not posted since June. I justified not posting in July and August as it being the summer holidays and nobody would read it anyway. I am not sure how to justify September, but its October now so right back at it.

Also I have started playing around with FeedBurner. To get an enhanced experience start using the URL below to access my blog.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheEmailPractice