How small is too small, for E-mail marketing?
Thinking back on last week’s seminar tour it’s clear to me that many smaller arts organizations are now waking up to the potential of e-mail marketing. That’s a good thing.
However, no matter how emphatically I describe the anti-spam efforts of ISPs, I don’t think I’m getting the message out clearly enough. If you’re sending group e-mail from Outlook or an AOL account, you run a very high risk of having your account “blacklisted” by ISPs. That means your e-mail won’t get delivered.
Some arts managers say “But we’re really a small organization, and we want to do e-mail marketing well, but we’re too small, so what can we do to do it right, without spending any money?” My answer is that the ISPs don’t care how small or large you are. If they see bulk e-mail coming from a suspect address, they will block it.
So, if you believe that e-mail marketing is valuable to your organization, it’s worth spending money on it. Relative to the cost of any other kind of marketing, this is the one that will give you the best return on your investment, hands down.
If you’re just getting started, before you dump any money in offline marketing, I’d say that your best strategy is to do something very cutting edge, and make your first marketing investment in online marketing. Once you’ve decided that, e-mail is the clearly best place to begin.
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