Is email marketing still relevant?

19 February 2013/Lesleigh Ross

With social media becoming the status quo of communication, is email marketing even worth bothering with? I’ve been hearing for a few years that the death of email marketing is imminent. I still think it’s alive and kicking based on the amazing results from client campaigns.

According to a recent MarketingProfs article, 89% of marketers use email marketing as their primary communication channel.

In February 2012, they tipped the ongoing trends for email marketing as:

Relevancy
Personalisation
Timing
Cross-channel strategy

Now it’s February 2013, personally I don’t think it’s really changed—it’s best practice. People buys things and refer to businesses they know, like and trust. Email marketing is a great way to build a more personal relationship that will keep you top of mind.

Last year I was working with a client to gear up their overall marketing strategy; a key component was email marketing. Within a few months their email open rates went from around 15% to an average of about 22% (and that was with a icy cold list that grew from around 2000 to over 3000).

The thing that amazed me was the number of subscribers who would reply back to the sender. One campaign we got something like 70% reply rate; by this I mean people emailing back responding to the content in the message. Even though the same message was sent to the whole list, it was written in a way that seemed totally personalised.

Ok, I know you’re busting to know how we did it. What made their campaigns successful was the content. We made sure it was relevant to the subscribers interests and it was personalised to things they’ve attended, things they’re planning on attending, stuff they bought etc.

Using the right email marketing tools also makes a big difference!

I am shamelessly biased when it comes to Office AutoPilot (soon to be known as Ontraport) for reasons like it makes personalising email messages easy as. I’m not talking about whacking in the subscriber’s name, most email broadcast tool do that. I’m talking about really sexy stuff like being able to segment your list based on the events they’ve attended, actions they’ve completed on your website, people they’ve referred to your website to buy stuff and so, so much more. You are only limited by your imagination. I don’t think I’ve actually come across something I’ve wanted to do that Office AutoPilot can’t do (I’ve come close, but they’ve never let me down).

Using tools like Office AutoPilot takes the guess work out of automating your campaigns (even when they are in different time zones) and makes it super easy to stay in regular contact with your customers with things that always feels relevant to them. It just takes a little bit of planning.

If you would like a hand to get your planning kick started, drop us a line or call Leigh on 0403 515 665.

Happy emailing 🙂

Lesleigh Ross

Over the last decade Lesleigh Ross has been leading project and change teams in complex delivery environments and transformation projects across public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Leigh is highly skilled in industry best practice methodologies and frameworks which is demonstrated through her ability to deliver quality business outcomes across ‘green fields’ and recovery projects and programmes. As a ‘digital native’ Leigh believes delivering innovation in business is only possible through collaborative project design where the business and technical teams work hand in hand. A geek in her own right Leigh is able to “degeek the geek” and facilitate effective engagement through all stages of project delivery. Outside of work with Valiente, Leigh is a founder and member of the Round Table at the Change Community Hub, and proud member of the Australian Institute of Project Management and the International Centre of Complex Project Management. She is active in her local chapters and national interest groups which are focused on improving the professionalism, diversity and inclusion within the project management community.