…is not delivery. Or spam. Or open rates. Or click-throughs. Instead, the biggest threat to email marketing is the failure of marketers to “market” email as a communications vehicle to senior management.
This is not just the opinion of this blogger who frequently blames marketers for not educating their senior management on the value of marketing. It’s argued by the writer of the widely read Email Insider, Bill McCloskey, who says here that the biggest threat to email marketing is the “lack of education of upper management on the importance of email as a marketing channel.”
Citing a recent Forrester Research study called E-Mail Marketing Comes of Age, which finds that 94% of marketers work in companies that use email marketing, McCloskey notes that email clearly works.
Bill writes, “Click-through rates have remained steady, about 5%, for the last four years, but those who do click through are the kind of customers marketers, especially retailers, are looking for. Those who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than those who are non-readers of email marketing. And an astounding 50% of those who open and read email marketing messages are more likely to purchase impulse items once they get to the site.”
What’s more: three out of five people who forward email messages to friends are women. One-third of consumers who maintain a separate email address to receive email promotions are in the 18-34 year old range.
But still: marketers have not provided adequate explanation to upper management to secure well-funded budgets.
The real value of the Forrester figures is not just the numbers, but what we do with them. In fact, the study is great ammunition to educate your CEO about the effectiveness of email in reaching your customers.
Does your senior management “get it?” How did you make them believers?
Tags: Bill_McCloskey, email_marketing, Forrester, Roy_Young
Great topic, Roy. I’m curious as to your thoughts on what marketing can do to not only get senior management buy-in, but sales force buy-in for email marketing. Our sales force is comprised of 5 territories, and each rep is “CEO” of their territory (we have a small, flat organization) – essentially, we create all the emails and other communications, but whether or not they actually get sent is at the individual sales reps’ discretion. In my experience, my reps write off email marketing due to spam hurdles. How do I get them on board? Thanks in advance.
Roy,
Great post! I encourage anyone who isn’t using e-mail as part of their marketing mix (or if they are using it but unsuccessfully) for any reason to purchase the Forrester study or to at least read the executive summary and all the articles written about the study. In sum, it has been the research by Forrester and others over the past years that have given me the information necessary to explain to clients how best to integrate e-mail into their mix. Clients and bosses want data, not gut feelings.
Thanks, Lewis, for your kind words and for your suggestion that we marketers use research from credible sources to make our case to top management.
I feel your pain, Carolyn. You may be interested in a panel of experts MarketingProfs has assembled for an upcoming conference (more details to come in the next week or so) with marketers from IBM, Cisco and Armstrong talking about how they are using email throughout the entire sales cycle …. including automated event-triggered emails, email series to nurture key relationships, multi-channel communications mapping, and more! The goal: identify (or dismiss) practical and actionable strategies to test the impact of email – and earn new revenue (and higher budgets).
Roy, I couldn’t agree more. What we see from our clients who would love more big brand buy-in to email is that “upper management” thinks email brings liability problems. To pinpoint the lack of understanding seems to be the difference between transactional vs. acquisition and how even the most aggressive forms of email marketing can be done in a responsible and compliant manner. It’s also difficult because email can be a very collaborative medium to work in- which makes it harder sell inside bigger companies.
Thanks Roy – good post and comments. Particlurly what Lewis says about data vs gut feelings. The standards of measure (opens, click-throughs, forwards, unsubscribes) can be deceptive – and that’s the data we use. How does it translate to revenue? That’s what the senior executive wants and needs. James, too, brings up an excellent point – there is a great deal of collaboration involved. I’m the one that grabs the words/image onto the form, pushes the send and tracks the response – but for that to happen the “designer” weaves the message, someone proofs, someone approves and then its off to the races. There is no denying the value of email marketing – its the small detail of monetizing it that makes some say – “what’s the point”?
there is a great deal of collaboration involved. I’m the one that grabs the words/image onto the form, pushes the send and tracks the response – but for that to happen the “designer” weaves the message, someone proofs, someone approves and then its off to the races. There is no denying the value of email marketing – its the small detail of monetizing it that makes some say – “what’s the point”?
Informative, I have been pondering on the spam filters as many emails are flagged as spam and never get read, this of course have some effect. Not until now do I realize that we have more important issues, thanks for the great article.