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Nick Gold, VP, Emailvision
Email marketing has been around for a long time, is well tested and understood, yet still massively underdeveloped. The last ten years have seen a multiplication and fragmentation in the ways we communicate, but one thing hasn't changed: good marketing starts and finishes with the customer, and email is proven to get you closer to them.
Just look at the Direct Marketing Association 2010 Email Benchmarking Report, which revealed that UK businesses are becoming more dependent on email to achieve their marketing goals, with a huge shift towards social media integration with email. Email volumes continue to rise, with UK marketers sending more than 1.7bn emails in the first half of 2010, an increase of 50% over the same period in 2009. It's clearly not restricted to the UK either; at Emailvision, we're handling more than 4bn emails a month globally for over 2,500 brands, such as Orange, Sony and Unilever.
So why does email remain such a prevalent force in the marketing world? Apart from the clear benefits of being cost-effective, scaleable and adaptable to deliver relevant communication, it's email's ability to converse with audiences across platforms that makes it so key to marketing strategies today. Integrating with social media, email has evolved from being a one-way street (brand to consumer) to becoming a conversation between the two parties.
The ability to both listen carefully and speak clearly to your audiences has become critical, as has the need to engage your customers in the channels where they choose to be. Our customers are reaping the benefits of this approach and are best set to take advantage of the effectiveness of email. Filofax is a prime example. By posing questions and asking for comments via email or Facebook on specific themes, it has uncovered a huge array of surprisingly emotional customer stories. Stories shared on Facebook are used in Filofax's email newsletter to drive further engagement with the brand.
It's this concept of storytelling through integrated email and social media marketing that was key to the success of the campaign, and is reshaping future email campaigns. Email marketers are no longer just in charge of shipping swathes of information outwards. They're now community managers, who need to listen, converse and relate to their target audiences, no matter how niche. As recovery continues and brands look to get a headstart on the competition, it'll be those that capitalise on the evolution of email and social media marketing that gain the most. Will you be leading the field or playing catch-up?