* This is a partial reprint of Li’s ClickZ column on Integrated Marketing
Mark Twain's Letter
Mark Twain once wrote in a letter in 1897, “…the report of my death was an exaggeration.” This too can be said of email with so many experts proclaiming its demise. The reality is, email marketing isn’t dying just yet, but it is changing. It’s becoming more efficient, especially when integrated with your other marketing channels. The trick to being successful at it in today’s socially-engaged world is that the marketer has to understand their audience, not just a demographic.
With the growth of social media, experts were proclaiming that surely this was the channel that would kill off email. That couldn’t be further from the truth. People still subscribe to email lists because they want to get that information right to their desktop; they don’t want to have to go out and search a social community or go to a search engine to find the information that they are interested in. There’s a convenience factor to email that a large segment of the general population still finds attractive.
Unfortunately for the user, there’s no way to communicate back with an email in a way that appeals to social channels, and most emails come from a generic email address that a human doesn’t man. This is where integration comes into play. Remember with your email list you already have a captive audience that is interested in your message; make sure that you give them every opportunity that’s available to become engaged with you. This means using a more enhanced means of email marketing than the old-style “list serve” system.
Email Marketing Has Become “Socialized”
No longer is email marketing about a plain text email being sent out, which is why the rise of very affordable email services like MailChimp, Blue Sky Factory, and Constant Contact has taken place. These types of services offer an array of “social add-ons” where you can make sure your email marketing message can be engaged with on your available social channels. They also make it easy for any small business owner to launch a socially-engaged email campaign.
There’s been a lot of hype about Social Media over the past two years. Before that, it was Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and before that eMail marketing was all the rage. This next coming year is supposed to be the “year of mobile” (although I’ve been hearing that for the last 5 years, so I’m not quite convinced we’re entering the year of mobile marketing). The funny thing is, otherwise conservative companies can be quick to jump on the latest band approach because it’s the newest, shiniest thing without a solid, research-based strategy. They have to have a “Director of This” or a “Manager of That,” and one doesn’t coordinate with the other. By being so quick to jump on the latest fads and pouring a ton of money into that new channel and siphoning away from others, companies segregate and segment their marketing efforts. Segmenting your marketing channels into silos that don’t communicate with one another really isn’t the answer.
