Sorry to raise the GDPR subject again (it's getting like the Brexit story) but as marketeers we need to take a look at how effective e-mail marketing is in today's marketing mix.
According to a McKinsey report from a few years ago, and long before 'Social Media' moved on from simply posting pictures of your dog, cat, holiday's, what you had for breakfast/dinner and those spammy intrusive adverts of your product, the view from McKinsey was that it's in decline;
Is email dead? Lately, it feels like the marketing world has fallen out of love with email. McKinsey’s iConsumer survey reported a 20% decline in email usage as the medium surrendered ground to social networks, IM, and mobile messaging apps.
As someone who was proud to have successfully built (and sold) the 5th largest (by volume) e-mail marketing company in the UK the rise of 'free to use' messaging services and continued innovations around 'free to use' social media platforms, and in particular the rise of 'social commerce' continues to reduce the ongoing effectiveness of e-mail in the marketing mix.
Where does it continue to add value?
From an outbound perspective the stats (my personal experience & the impact of GDPR) show what was once the ‘go to’ outbound communications platform has fast become an ineffective medium, particularly in eCommerce where the main open rates are service driven emails e.g. Order confirmation etc.
We have even seen companies like 'WetherSpoons' delete their e-mail database!
A tad drastic maybe, however with the unabated rise of Social Media and the ability to connect with the right people and businesses without the need for a database is certainly something to consider.
The only email I know that has a 99.9% retention rate with the highest number of openings (4/5) are the confirmation emails as described above.
We all keep checking how much we paid, did we order the right thing, when it’s getting delivered & have I really booked that holiday & flight correctly.
Other than that, time limited & personalised offers do nothing other than force a click, which at best is less than 1%.
We have recently heard that a huge retail brand (Lush Cosmetics) is dropping its social media presence, due in the main to them growing “tired of fighting with algorithms” and will only speak to customers via a live online chat function. Again, somewhat drastic but if ever there was a case study that supports 'how not to do social media' this is the biggest to date.
Maybe it's time you looked hard at that CRM system that isn't earning you the $$$$ it once was, and took a long hard look at 'Social Media' as a significant part of the marketing strategy.
As 'practitioners' of what we do we can evidence the ROI.
Why? because we do what we teach you and your people to do, and the best bit is you already have the tools and resources to leverage the value.
To find out more, by all means drop me a note. We don't do outbound marketing so please don't expect an e-mail.
In fact, of the 1,006 US digital buyers surveyed in a June 2018 study from Yes Lifecycle, just 9% of respondents said they don't ignore emails from retailers. But why? For one, they get too many of them. More than half (55%) of respondents said as much, with younger digital buyers—those ages 18 to 23—more likely to feel this way than their older cohorts. Nearly as many respondents (50%) said they disregard emails because the product recommendations they're seeing are irrelevant.
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