Common questions about email marketing include the following:
- Is email marketing more or less effective than [social media, blogging, etc…]?
- Millennials don’t use email, so how can email marketing be used to reach them? Or can it be used with millennials at all?
- Does email marketing work with people who are hyper-protective of their inbox? How about really important or busy people like CTOs?
- Is email marketing in general dying or dead?
Adobe recently released the results of a survey of 1000 “white collar workers” RE: email.
You can read the whole thing here http://www.cmo.com/adobe-digital-insights/articles/2016/9/30/adobe-email-survey-2016.html but I’ll pull out some of the more relevant points for you:
- Time spent with email is up 17% year over year (YoY).
- Millennials—consumers ages 18 to 34—spend the most time with email of any age group and rely primarily on their smartphones (90%) to do so.
- People identifying smartphones as their primary device to check work email grew 21% YoY.
- 49% of respondents said they prefer email marketing communications, followed by direct mail (22%).
- Respondents also said that less than 25% of emails are interesting enough to open.
- Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they have checked email while watching TV or a movie, on vacation (53%), in the bathroom (45%), and while on the phone (44%). Also, 17% admitted checking while driving.
I know this is just one study with a somewhat limited sample size, but it fits the larger trend I see, which is that email is not dead. It continues to be the best marketing channel you can use to reach buyers and recommenders, even if they are millennials. 🙂
Here’s a brief list of email marketing best practices:
- To maximize open rates
- Make your email content itself valuable and relevant. In other words, make your emails worth opening. 🙂
- Make sure the following elements are interesting and relevant to your audience: 1) the mobile phone preview of the email content 2) the subject line
- Use your human name on the FROM field of emails to your list
- To maximize engagement with your list
- Think of your emails as episodes of a popular television show. Be very consistent about when and how often you email your list.
- Focus your emails on problems and needs that are relevant and important to your list.
- Again, provide value. Education is one way to provide value, but do not ignore the value of entertainment. On a somewhat recent survey of the 100 most trusted people in America, 7 of the top 10 are entertainers, Bill and Melinda gates are #7 and #9, and Maya Angelou is #5. The highest-ranking politician in terms of trust is at
#24 (Jimmy Carter), the highest-ranking judge is at #43 (Stephen Breyer), and the highest-ranking religious personality is at #67 (Billy Graham). There’s a lesson in there for anyone using email marketing. 🙂
- Treat your list members like the intelligent people they are, not like numbers to “convert” at any cost.
- Have an opinion or a stance on stuff your list cares about, and be polarizing but not harsh.
There are more best practices, but let me just point you to a recent Dev Shop Marketing Briefing with more: https://philipmorganconsulting.com/dev-shop-marketing-briefings/dsmb-email-marketing-mindset/
Talk to you soon,
-P
If your dev shop got fewer than 10 leads last week, you need to take this free email course –> http://positioningcrashcourse.com