Is E-Mail Marketing Dead?
March 9th, 2009 by Bob Bly
New media evangelists have long denigrated e-mail as “interruption marketing” and praised both search and social networking as non-intrusive alternatives.
The younger generation (my teenagers) also seems to shy away from e-mail, preferring Facebook and texting as their primary means of online communication.
In an article in Direct (3/09, p. 8), Ken Magill notes that e-mail marketing remains “the top online applications,” with more than 9 out of 10 Internet users sending and receiving e-mail.
Do you agree that e-mail is not only a viable but an extremely profitable online marketing channel, and will be for many years to come?
Or do you side with new media gurus who predict e-mail marketing is going the way of the dodo and the dinosaur?
This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:36 am
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March 9th, 2009 at 10:57 am
As long as you follow the rules and build trust, I believe email marketing is here to stay.
I think social media will work alongside email marketing, rather than replace it.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:09 am
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March 9th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Actually, what seems to be happening is more a technically driven decision. A lot of what we call email marketing is moving to be ‘automated’. Earlier email marketing worked similar to postal email campaigns, now, systems are powerful enough to auto-respond to purchase history, preferences, etc… so in a sense, email marketing as we know it will be less and less, and be slowly but surely automated, with less emphasis on ‘stand alone’ campaigns and less human input.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
DMWrecks: I see what you mean about data-driven auto-responders serving targeted e-mail marketing messages based on transaction and purchase activity. But I don’t think you mean that the copy in such e-mail should reflect “less human input” (i.e., less personal, more factual) do you?
March 9th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I agree with Dianacacy
As long as you continue to add value in your respective marketing channels ( social media , email marketing etc. ) , then the response will be a positive one.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I don’t believe that email marketing is dead. Infact, we have had excellent sales for both ePostMailer and Email Charger. If you use an opt-in list, and have content that your recipients would actually like to read, you would have extremely high ROIs.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I have to agree with @dianacacy I don’t think we will see email marketing die out any time soon but we will see an increase in communicating through social media. I believe we’ll see marketers moving towards marketing automation and lead nurturing solutions like NurtureHQ.com which take email marketing a few steps further but it won’t mean email marketing is set to disappear any time soon.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Email marketing is not going anywhere.
Its effectiveness may decrease slightly, similar to TV advertisements, BUT it will continue to be a very useful marketing strategy for a long time.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
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March 9th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Someone forgot to tell social networks that email is dead. They all rely on it to drive a significant amount of their traffic back to the site. Have you received a “what’s new” email notice from LinkedIn, an email from Twitter about new replies, new Facbook friend emails, etc.
Reports of email being dead are just trying to catch attention by being sensational.
[Beep: You just received an email about a new comment on your blog.] 😉
March 9th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Tom hit the nail on the head: 1) social networking sites recognize great benefit from email marketing 2) talk about “this” or “that” dying is hype to gain attention.
Relevancy is the issue with marketing. There’s no such thing as an interruption from something you value.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
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March 9th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
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March 9th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
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March 9th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
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March 10th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Hi Bob,
In the B2B world where many of us work, I have seen quite a few reports recently citing e-mail newsletters and e-mail marketing as top strategies for producing sales results. While the social networking sites grow in popularity, they are just not capable of targeting audiences and messages with the same precision as e-mail – important to marketers. And the technology culture is adapting to be able to service more e-mail (not less) and react to it more rapidly via hand held devices, etc. I think e-mail will still be doing this for quite a while into the future. slr
March 10th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
As you said, “teenagers” prefer social sites and text messaging to emails. They aren’t the ones spending serious money. It’s the older farts like me who have money to spend and would be more inclined to follow an email lead to a product or service. Email is here to stay, and in my opinion always will be.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
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March 10th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
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March 11th, 2009 at 1:04 am
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:55 am
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March 11th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
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March 13th, 2009 at 10:06 am
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March 13th, 2009 at 10:19 am
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March 13th, 2009 at 10:22 am
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March 13th, 2009 at 10:25 am
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March 13th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Part of me wishes e-mail marketing would die, because writing e-mails is one of the least fun aspects of my job. (It might be more fun if we weren’t working in a creative straitjacket, but that’s a whole ‘nuther Dilbertian story….)
March 13th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
I think SPAM gives opt-in email a bad name. Many marketers rank email as a high-conversion marketing tool, and treat in-house lists as precious commodities.
As you’ve said before, providing content people actually want to read makes all the difference.
March 16th, 2009 at 4:41 am
Like many marketing channels. Email is suffering from its own success. For me, the idea email will die and some other form of communication replacing it is highly unlikely. I feel “bad” email marketing is dead or at least well on its way out. You can’t get away with the “build and blast” approach anymore. ISP and junk mail filtering has done us a favour and we’ll gain even more as email clients are able to remove the unwanted clutter. So… in summary and to reiterate other points in this blog, permission email is here to stay and content will always be king.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
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March 17th, 2009 at 12:03 am
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March 19th, 2009 at 11:08 am
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March 19th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
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March 23rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
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March 30th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
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March 31st, 2009 at 6:00 pm
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November 17th, 2020 at 1:44 am
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November 9th, 2022 at 7:06 am
I think, Email marketing is still working for B2B contacts.
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