We have our own off-the-shelf Industrial Strength Mail System that allows you to take control of your own email marketing for a one-off fee. Do you need an email marketing system as well as all your social networking... Read on below...
Article taken from Econsultancy.com's blog posted on 9th November 2010
Is email marketing dead? Not according to Econsultancy's recently published Buyer's Guide, which predicts the market will have grown by an estimated 15% this year, to a total value of £336 million.
But there are many who still believe social media will devour email's slice of the pie, including Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandburg. However, as the industry is approaching maturity, naturally the sector is changing according to developing user needs and increasingly sophisticated technology. The evidence indicates that email marketing is far from dead...
Email. Good old email. It's been around since the inception of the web, and it's popular with consumers and marketers alike. Why? Because it's reliable, inherently measurable, and provides demonstrable return on investment.
But there are some who claim the reign of email is over. Like the Wall Street Journal, for example, where in 2009 it was reported that "services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others [are] vying for a piece of the new world."
While it's true that the storming popularity of social media continues to accelerate, there's no indication that social media is replacing, or killing off email communication. In fact, email is very much alive and kicking...
There's life beyond 140 characters.
Social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, are an additional channel in the overall media mix for consumers. Consumers now have a wider range of channels available to them, but there is little evidence to suggest they are tweeting instead of emailing, or that social media is replacing email. Twitter is effective for certain types of communication, as is email. Updating a status, for example, doesn't leave much room for expressing a point of view or promoting the details of a campaign. It's also worth noting that social media channels cannot function without an email address.
Familiarity is key.
Consumers like email because they are familiar with the channel, and have been using it to communicate since the birth of the internet. It's also easy to use, which makes it popular among consumers of all ages and demographics.
Typical online consumer behaviour further illustrates the familiarity of email. The confirmation email reassures the consumer that the transaction has gone through, that it's secure, and that they have a point of reference at each step along the customer journey.
It's about a multichannel approach.
Effective marketing is no longer about pitting one channel against one another, but rather about how different channels can work in conjunction with another. It's been widely acknowledged that email and social media complement each other. In fact, email can function as a seeding tool to get users on to social networks in the first place.
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