Quick and Easy vs Thoughtful and Efficient
E-mail marketing is maturing as a discipline and with that comes a dilemma. The chart to the right demonstrates what I’ve been saying (and a lot of people have been saying) for a long time: when you segment your list, target your mailings and test various approaches, you’ll get better results.
This seems almost self-evident, since e-mail is nothing more than a form of direct mail, where targeting and segmenting and testing is a way of life.
The dilemma is how to get this message out to our industry in a way that marketers will swallow. What frustrates me is that just because the execution of e-mail marketing is quick and easy compared to print, most marketers seem to want the entire experience of e-mail marketing to be quick and easy.
"Heck I’ll blast everyone with this e-mail" is a lot quicker and easier than "let me segment my list, write different copy for different segments and test some subject lines."
As it matures, e-mail marketing in the arts must move from a "quick and easy" mentality to a "thoughtful and efficient" mindset. E-mail marketing can’t be thought of as great because it’s fast and cheap. It needs to be great because you can get better ROI than any other marketing technique you can use.
The evidence is in. Can you help me spread the word?
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