Email Marketing: Dead or Alive?

With the start of my new job, I decided to go on a quest to find out if email marketing was dead or alive in this current age of SMM.

With my previous knowledge of Social Media Marketing [SMM] and knowledge from the SMM class I am taking currently, there is a little minnion inside of me that says, " Yieks! That will turn off more potential clients than it will do good."

However, this is the approach that the company wishes to take, so before I completely disregard it I decided I wanted to do some research about email marketing.

I found a great article talking about email marketing tips and stats for 2014. Here are the most interesting facts & tips I found:

Stats

• According to eMarketer there will be around 236.8 million US email users by 2017.
• For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment.
• 56% of businesses say they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2013.

Mobile

• When planning content for a multi-device experience, your most important content should come first. Think back to the top-down hierarchy taught in basic journalism—what do you most want your readers to see?
• Know your audience—it’s the most basic of all marketing principles. If your brand’s mobile audience is at or above 10%, it’s time to start optimizing for mobile.
• Don’t focus solely on click-based interaction—instead, try to think in terms of swipes and taps. As with any good design, grid-based layouts ensure content is easy to read and digest.

Mastering the Inbox

• Do you want to help your bounce rate? Locate the emails that generated the high number of bounce backs and investigate the source of the list. 
• Comply with the guidelines in the federal CAN-SPAM legislation. Most importantly, make sure that all requests for removal from your mailing lists are honored. 
• 33% of email recipients open email based on subject line alone.
• More people read emails that deal with their finances and travel than any other category. 
• Recipients often only read the subject line or the first few lines of an email. Include your CTA early on in your email. 
• Subject lines fewer than 10 characters long had an open rate of 58%.

Data.Data.Data

• 7 in 10 people say they made use of a coupon or discount from a marketing email in the prior week. (2012 Blue Kangaroo Study)
• If the addresses were acquired organically via form submissions, consider using a Confirmed Opt-In process. With Confirmed Opt-In, an individual is required to enter an email address to access your site or content. Upon registering their email address, a verification email will be sent to the address provided. This way, new subscribers can only submit valid, active email addresses. 

Social Media & Email

• It is important to include social sharing buttons at the top of your email. When the recipient clicks the share button, have the social post populated with interesting copy and a shortened link.

So the end result after this article? I'm more willing to give email campaigns a try! I think that as long as they are legit and well designed then they can be very effective. 

My verdict is that email marketing is still very much alive!