BrightWave Marketing’s G. Simms Jenkins predicts 2005 will be a banner year for email marketing.

When asked the question, “So what do you for a living?” at a cocktail party my typical reply is that I have a marketing company that manages email marketing programs. The usual retort is “So you are the reason I get so much spam in my mailbox, thanks.” Depending on the person I am speaking with and my energy level, I try to persuade my conversation partner that spam is just a small yet annoying subset of email marketing and not the legitimate permission-based marketing that leading companies utilize.

Clearly, email marketing takes its fair share of abuse -- some deserved, and some not so deserved. With that being said, I think that 2005 will be a banner year for email marketing like no other. With spam and deliverability issues continuing to be addressed and (hopefully) marginalized, most email marketers are now committed to best practices. Additionally, CAN-SPAM legislation is more widely enforced and this year should shape up to be the breakthrough year that all digital marketers have been waiting for. Email marketing is on its way to being accepted by the mainstream media and public as a powerful and efficient marketing channel -- not just a niche.

Let’s not forget the accomplishments of email marketing in 2004:

Marketers are saying:

Email is retaining customers and budgets will grow

Digital marketing firm Interactive Prospect Targeting (IPT) reported that 75 percent of marketers surveyed believe that email is an effective customer retention tool and 51 percent plan to increase their budgets regarding email marketing.

Email is also bringing in revenues

DoubleClick Q3 2004 Email Trend Report found a significant increase in the productivity of email for online merchants, with conversion rates and number of orders per emails delivered both rising over the previous year's rates.
 
And more importantly, consumers say:

They are opting in on a more frequent and wide reaching basis

DoubleClick’s 2004 Consumer Email Study found more than half of consumers (57 percent) report receiving permission-based email from online merchants and from brick-and-mortar retailers (55 percent), with slightly fewer receiving them from catalogers (45 percent). In addition, 54 percent say that they currently receive bills and statements by email, with 65 percent of respondents receiving banking statements by email.

They are interested in content

Fifty-two percent were interested in offers for related products, 47 percent in information about membership rewards programs and 41 percent displayed an interest in sweepstakes.

They are more likely to buy than last year

Thirty-two percent of respondents have made an immediate purchase online as a result of an email, up from 28 percent in 2003. A slightly smaller percentage (30 percent) have clicked on an email to find more information, and then returned later to purchase online. An additional 12 percent clicked on an email to find more information and then later purchased the item offline. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of consumers have redeemed an online coupon during an online purchase, while 59 percent have redeemed an online coupon offline.

Email is overtaking traditional direct marketing methods

A significant percentage of consumers consider email to be a replacement for telemarketing and direct mail.

I expect more eMarketers to use this type of data to build business cases to justify greater spend on email marketing in 2005. Below are other hopes and predictions for 2005 within the email marketing universe:

• Marketers will improve personalization and customization of content and offers. It is still mind boggling that I get emails from my primary airline that include offers mainly from cities I don’t live in when they clearly have data that shows where I fly out of (and where I fly to). 
  
  
• Marketers will use their voluminous reporting data to target based on click-through and response metrics rather than just redeploy broad messaging. 
  
  
• Most mid to large companies will have not only an Email Marketing Manager but a Compliance Manager to ensure spam and privacy issues are being met.
  
  
• Traditional ad agencies and interactive shops will acquire or create stand alone email marketing units to handle the demand in order to create new revenue opportunities.
  
  
• Designers will deliver email messages with better usage of landing pages, flash and rich media within the content of emails without jeopardizing delivery rates. 
  
  
• Marketers will provide subscribers and customers with real value-added content, offers and a reason to stay subscribed.
   
• More companies will partner with Email Service Providers (ESP) to ensure best practices in compliance, allowing them to focus on core competencies while outsourcing the management of campaigns.
  
  
• Real email marketing strategy will kick in. Campaign centric planning will begin to take preference to just deploying non-related emails. Email messages will build upon one another, rather than appear to be created in isolation of overall marketing campaigns.
  
  
• Companies will test, adapt and fine tune their messaging. Look for many new looks and value propositions.
  
  
• Companies will better utilize personalization of frequency -- companies should use integrated campaign results to determine the ideal frequency at the customer level. One customer may respond well to one email a month while another may prefer weekly announcements.
  
  
• Integration of offline and online media -- companies will begin to realize that having different departments for offline and online marketing is not fruitful. As companies centralize all marketing, customers can expect unified offers, content and design.
  
  
• Companies will better utilize viral marketing messages and revaluate from design, branding and CAN-SPAM viewpoints.
  
  
• Companies will use more Point of Sale opportunities to acquire email addresses and engage in additional messaging opportunities with existing customers. Low cost, low resistance acquisition opportunities should be exploited due to the high cost of acquisition.

G. Simms Jenkins is Founder and Principal of BrightWave Marketing, an Atlanta based Email Marketing and Customer Relationship Services firm. He has extensive relationship marketing experience on both the client and agency side. Jenkins has led BrightWave Marketing in establishing a large client list, including marquee clients like GMAC Insurance, CoreNet Global and The Atlanta Journal - Constitution. BrightWave Marketing has become a leader in the Email Marketing outsourcing space by using their expertise in strategy, design, list management, segmenting, delivery and analysis. Jenkins has been recognized by many media outlets as an Email Marketing and CAN-SPAM expert. Prior to BrightWave Marketing, Jenkins was Director of Business Development at two high-tech start-ups and headed the CRM group at Cox Interactive Media, a unit of media giant Cox Enterprises.