In Focus

5 major hurdles for email marketing

Susan Kuchinskas
Email Posted on June 03, 2009

Email: The endangered workhorse

If "Lost" were about interactive marketing, Kate would be display: glowingly attractive but highly unpredictable. Sawyer would be social media: sexy and dangerous. And stalwart, competent, true-blue Juliet? She'd be email marketing.

"All these new technologies are very sexy and get a lot of press," says Jeanne S. Jennings, an interactive marketing strategy and product development consultant. "But email is still the workhorse of the online marketing world."

To get a sense of email's relative clout, take a look at Forrester Research's U.S. Interactive Advertising Forecast: In 2010, Forrester expects email marketing to come in a distant third, garnering $1.355 billion marketing dollars. Search marketing ranks first, with a $17.765 billion price tag, followed by online display ad spending at $8.395 billion. (Social media spending is expected to surpass email spending in 2013.)

Its relative inexpensiveness may be part of email's charm. Aficionados say that email is the most cost-efficient medium, with the best ROI. But in these changing times, the channel faces new challenges, while a couple of the familiar ones have a new look.

Email marketers, get ready to leap over these hurdles.

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Comments

Dominique Hind
Dominique Hind June 12, 2009 at 3:08 AM

I'm really passionate about email marketing. Who is doing it well and who isn't. I've reviewed a lot of email marketing programs, what's working and what's not.

Here is a review of Apple's email marketing (presentation included), what they are doing, common elements and what else they should be doing: http://tinyurl.com/lvhq7s

Air New Zealand (airline) are designing the best templated emails. Each has its own personality and style. A review of the emails can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/l2spwm

Would welcome any feedback or comments.

James Riker
James Riker June 8, 2009 at 3:22 PM

I just got a copy of http://EmailCharger.com and I would recommend to anyone who needs to send out an opt-in email mailshot. Its the best desktop email marketing software I have used so far.

Tami Forman
Tami Forman June 8, 2009 at 9:24 AM

Susan,
Great article. On the deliverability front one of the most important things marketers need to do is get the data they need to really understand where their email goes. Too many of them accept a report that says 98% is "delivered" because that stat is measured as the number of messages sent minus the number that don't bounce. While a 2% bounce rate is fine it doesn't tell you anything about whether the email ended up in the inbox. Using seed lists to assess whether or not email is delivered is the only way for marketers to know where their email goes.

Cheers,
Tami M. Forman, Return Path, Inc.
www.returnpath.net

LaTonya Higgins
LaTonya Higgins June 3, 2009 at 5:08 PM

I can definitely agree with your article, I have done personal research in this arena. Right now Social Media is becoming intensely powerful. If you are active in these medias product, services and announcements grow just that much quicker.

Excellent for Branding as well!

LaTonya Higgins
Financial Literacy Institute(F.L.I.)
www.financialliteracyinstitute.devhub.com
"Your F.L.I. Diva of Development"

Jennifer OMeara
Jennifer OMeara June 3, 2009 at 2:35 PM

Susan,

Thank you for providing in-depth insight into email deliverability challenges. Ensuring that a permission-based email arrives into an in-box and not a junk/spam folder is definitely one of the most challenging elements of an email marketing campaign.

In terms of email web video marketing, this is an extremely proven and effective way to engage recipients. While I'm not sure if the evolution of eVideo email will ultimately involve video playing directly in the message's body, marketers should consider using online video within their campaigns. There are products available, such as the Flimp Platform (http://www.flimp.net) that make it easy to create and distribute audiovisual content.