Despite Social Media, B2B Email Marketing is Not Dead

B2B email marketing seems to be a hot topic these days judging by the number of articles and reports I’ve been reading.

In its cover story for November 2009, E-Mail Marketing’s Future . . . Right Now, Website Magazine editor-in-chief Peter Prestipino and Senior Editor Mike Phillips report that:

“According to a June 2009 Marketing Trends Survey by StrongMail Systems, 42% of nearly 1,000 global business leaders polled plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2009. Of those, 81% intend to increase their e-mail marketing spend.

“Spending on email marketing . . . shows no signs of slowing down, even as social networks and search engines continue to dominate the marketing headlines.”

Exact Target, in its new white paper, Is Email Marketing Endangered?, reports that according to Forrester Research, investments in email marketing will grow from $1.2 billion in 2009 to $2 billion billion by 2014.

In the same report, Exact Target also notes that the DMA reports that email marketing’s return on investment is greater than $43 for every dollar spent.

Wow! That’s some ROI!

Reasons why email usage is growing

You would think that due to social media, texting, and email inbox overload, people would use email less. I certainly find it easier to connect with people quickly through Twitter, for example. And my son, who has multiple email accounts and a phone, texts me versus calling or emailing me.

I also find texting much easier now that I have an iPhone.

However, it is precisely due to smart phones and social media that email use is up.

Exact Target reports that those who own a smart phone “are significantly more likely to increase email usage than those who don’t,” with 43% of BlackBerry owners using email more often and 41% of iPhone users increasing their email usage.

This is mostly likely because it’s so dang easy to get email on your smart phone versus having to log into a computer.

And all types of organizations and businesses are using email more. Based on my own personal experience, I now get email from my bank, my temple, my gym, and my son’s school. Plus, I get all my regular business email.

On top of that, improved email technology is adding to email’s increased use. Exact Target reports that due to Gmail’s rapid innovations, Gmail users are increasing their use of email by a ratio of 6:1 — versus 2:1 for Yahoo, which has innovated at a much slower rate.

Thanks to Gmail’s integration of its Task application, for example, I can now create a task based on something I receive via email — and connect that email to the task. This means I can clean out my email box faster and not have a bunch of “pending” emails hanging around.

Even better, I added Google’s Task app to my iPhone, making it super easy to keep track of things at literally the press of a button. (No more paper sticky notes!)

Relevant messages still king

Although email appears in our inboxes and we read it, email is not a passive medium — or at least it shouldn’t be.

To be effective, email must engage readers . . . and to this end, it’s really important that email marketers think long and hard about their opt-in policies, campaign frequency, and content.

I realized this truth last week when I spent over three hours cleaning out my Gmail inbox — and unsubscribing from tons of email marketing messages that I’m not sure I ever asked to receive and that I had been simply deleting without reading for months.

Email marketing is so *not* about developing massive email lists (to which many of the people on the list didn’t exactly opt-in) and then sending out *stuff* and hoping something sticks.

Email marketing should be about giving people content they need to positively interact with your brand company and its employees (yes, real people).

And, given that many people like me are on total email overwhelm, ensuring that your messages get read is going take much more effort and strategic thinking than developing some lukewarm content and hitting “send.”

What do you think? Do you agree that email is still a “killer app”? Do you have a case study or story you’d like to share about how you’ve used email marketing to connect with customers? If so, please leave a comment below or send me email at “info@dhcommunications.com” with “email marketing” in the subject line.

photo credit: www.istockphoto.com/Gewitterkind