Is it true that email marketing is dead?

Email marketing effectiveness is largely determined by your relationship to the subscriber list. Below are some common list relationships, that largely determine how successful you will be.

Email Marketing With No Prior Relationship

Mostly Dead. While the FDA does allow you to send emails to recipients who you have no prior relationship with, or consent to mail to, nearly every email platform will not allow you to send to subscribers who have not given you permission first. Deliver-ability is a big factor here, because your emails will most likely be flagged as spam and your sender IP will get a bad reputation.

Email Marketing With Prior-Permission

Alive & Kicking. If you can get someone to opt-in to receive your messages, you can use popular sending platforms like Constant Contact, MailChimp, and GetResponse to send regular emails and promote your business if it is related to the reason they opted in. Your deliverability could still be throttled based on open rate, unsubscribe rate, and spam complaint rate.

Email Marketing for Retention

Rocket Fuel. Often the lowest cost per sale marketing channel for retention, you can generate incremental sales by sending follow up emails to your past customers. Because you have a past history with the subscribers, you have a familiarity that leads to continued engagement through email.


Email marketing is often considered a complementary tactic with other marketing channels. For instance, you can bring new visitors to your site through Organic Search, Paid Search & Social, and then continue to engage them through email. Metrics you want to pay attention to are last-in channel allocation, first in channel allocation, and the ever important cost per sale.

Like any other tool, they don't truly die but take shape in another form. They said the internet would kill paper and fax but we seen explosion of paper printing services and fax because technology made it more faster to use. With email IMO is that it will be used differently then what we is used now. I cannot say its future but email marketing had its use, it will be used more sparingly when people realize that quality of content will trump over quantity. So focus on the content and if that content will get the target audience from A to B. All technology are tools, so start with that premise.


A hammer is a thousand year old tool. But it's still used today. Software tools are no different.

Still alive and very well. I've been sending emails since the Internet started and using a powerful marketing tool in my email signature. I stopped using 6-8 lines of boring copy nobody saw until I found a unique and simple to use email signature service to share and promote my most important information. Having an interactive signature that visually includes photos, logos, and even animation for my readers to enjoy. Visualizing what I do provides my readers a first hand look at what I offer. Another benefit is that when I update a button link all current and previous emails I sent have the updated info as well. They can be updated as many times as I want to ensure readers have my current info. Take a look at http://get.esigmax.com and see how this unique email marketing tool can add an impact to every emai, sent.

I recommend trying this affordable and easy to use marketing tool that will brand your business and drive more traffic to your site or share important information...Don't send another email without it.

Hi Pretty,

Thank you for the great question,

From my experience, email is very much alive;
Email is multifaceted process, which serves while enabling the marketing process and plays an imperative role for strategy and communication. Sometimes the communication is aggregated by email, a lead arrives at a landing page, provides their info and then we send the lead a thank you email confirmation or acknowledgement.

The approach would depend on the brand's objective, what is it that you've would like to achieve (is brand awareness, or lead generation, etc.)

This would lead you to another avenue called Targeting or Segmentation; I'm finding this to becoming increasing more imperative as brand's complete with each other; based on objective we should target this specified set of persona's and thus we can maximize the ROI.

"Let's say I'm a brand that's provides insurance, I've crafted an email campaign for our newly released car insurance policy."

Case 1:
We do mass targeting (each contact) gives the same generically styled email template (exactly same communication, subject line, etc.)

Case 2:
We do some research and realize that there different persona's in the CRM database, craft specific email templates + communication to match the key identities of the applicable persona.

Pause for a moment: If you were the customer receiving the end copy, which would have make more likely for you to engage?

That's a brief overview of email marketing, there are more steps along the path all of which are truly unique and memorable , although the amount effort that placed correlates to the results achieved or the lack thereof (herein the comes the premise that email as a marketing channel is dead.

I don't know if it's dead but it is less effective than it once was and people are very sensitive to abuse. This year I am using highly targeted printed cards with photographs and sending them to specific people in the post in a handwritten envelope and it is very effective so far. I'm sending 10 a day when I'm in the office and think I will manage to get 1,000 out over the course of the year. It costs more, but it seems to be much more effective.

So you can shout at the crowd, but for certain products a whisper in the ear is better heard.

Email marketing works if you offer quality content tailored to your target marketing list. It's a way to stay in front of your target --- even if they do not read your email, they see your name.

Not at all true. In fact i would add that there is no truth in any marketing ever being call dead. Any marketing channel has merit to the extent that it is a channel that a client or prospect is willing to use to communicate with you.

I would highly recommend email marketing for existing clients. With a number of conditions:

1. make sure what you communicate is of value to the client
2. make sure you keep it at a frequency that matches needs and wants of clients(don't bombard them)
3. make sure you have a method to measure the results with metrics(responses, sales, leads etc)

I'd be less likely to use email marketing for prospects, unless they had definitely opted in.

But for existing clients, there isn't enough communication between business(especially small business) so increasing communication and email marketing is part of this is a good idea.

cheers

hunter

Hi Pretty,

My answer is no.
email marketing is still an effective way of capturing the relevant audience. But after high uses of mobile devices, and spam email marketing practices people don't want to click on every email they receive. Now it becomes a little bit challenging task for the email marketers to get ROI from their email campaigns.
Also, it does matter from business to business. Publisher sites and shopping sites are still getting benefits from email marketing.

Greetings...

I agree with most replies here. I have completed a course on inbound marketing which included email marketing. It is very much alive and will stay alive as long as we have the internet. However, it is evolving and companies need to adapt to new and exciting ways to use email marketing. Email marketing is not merely just about sales, you have to offer your clients incentives or a reason to open and read your emails, not just try to push something on them. With the correct wording, offers and information, email marketing can be extremely profitable.
Hope this helps :-)

The death of email marketing is a gossip. Email marketing is alive and kicking: it brings on average 122% ROI. Not bad for a dead one, isn't it?
Emails even won the mobile users' attention: they prefer reading emails to chatting on Facebook. I've found these and other facts as well as useful tips in the article Successful Email Marketing http://sam-ecommerce.com/blog/view/Successful-email-marketing