Timely Free Webinar - Leveraging the Value of Email Marketing During a Recession

I will be speaking on an all too relevant topic - how to maximize email marketing during an economic downturn. The free webinar is this Thursday, June 26, 2008 1:00 pm EST. Hosted by the American Marketing Association and Aquent, please join me and hopefully come away with some specific and actionable areas you can improve your email efforts, regardless of company size and budget. Register here

The official jargon is below:

Even in this economic climate you should be telling your CMO and CFO that more dollars, not less, should be allocated to email marketing. Sound crazy? Given that marketers generally have to fight for their share of the budget, it probably does. But there is a compelling business case for increasing the share of your budget to email marketing programs: What other channel delivers the kind of measurable ROI that email marketing does?

In this complimentary Aquent/AMA webcast, Simms Jenkins, CEO of award-winning email marketing services firm BrightWave Marketing, will help you build your business case and win over C-level executives by outlining the key elements of optimizing any email marketing program. These elements include:

Defining (or redefining) the purpose, goals, and benchmarks of your program.
Positioning email as a service bureau within your organization.
Tracking metrics.
Testing concepts, creative, and offers.
Learning how to cut costs and deliver exceptional value to subscribers.

New revealing study ties image suppression to lost ROI - will this get attention?

A new study provides startling evidence about the need for a strategic optimization of most email marketing programs, and at the very least, the creative treatment of email messages.

The eec's Retail Email Rendering Benchmark Study provides more evidence that image suppression is wreaking major havoc in the inbox and consequently, in the cash register.

Jeanniey Mullen, the founder and executive chairwoman of the Email Experience Council, offered this statement "Email marketing currently generates an estimated return on investment of $48.29 for every dollar spent on it, according to the Direct Marketing Association. We conservatively estimate that if all marketers optimized their emails for image blocking, email’s ROI would jump to $52.69. Not paying attention to rendering impacts revenue directly.”

This is an important connection and one that should be embedded into the minds of every email marketer. This is not an isolated creative or technical issue to be delegated to IT or the design team. It is one that must be taken on by the strategic leaders of each and every email marketing program.

Want more evidence? A recent study by SubscriberMail found that optimizing to ensure effective messaging even when images are off delivered an 87 percent increase in clicks.

Images blocked = email messaging/offers/content not shown = sales lost, loyalty eroded, leads missed, site traffic decreased.

Sadly, I think this message gets lost since email is still often perceived as a niche marketing channel. If someone's Facebook page or Second Life island only showed up to half of its visitors, do you think that would get these marketers attention?

Other key findings from the study include:
• 14% of retailers compose their navigation bars with HTML text rather than images.
• 3% of retailers used HTML call-to-action buttons rather than images.
• 88% of retailers include a “click to view” link in their preheader text.
• 63% of retailers include whitelisting instructions in their preheader text.
• The emails from only 21% of retailers displayed meaningful snippet text.

Email vs. Social Networking vs. whatever

Email marketing's eulogy has been written more than once. The web 2.0 crowd has been the most agressive of late, proclaiming the end of email marketing.

While you may guess where I stand on this issue, I wanted to link to two blog posts that have different takes on this subject. I find this conversation interesting to say the least.

Web 2.0 vs. Email: Unnecessary Anxiety

New study results: people don’t want your marketing messages