In 1988, Vint Cerf (@vgcerf), “Father of the Internet” and himself an Internet Hall of Fame inductee, helped arrange for the first commercial connection of email systems to the Internet.8 This paved the way for email to become the foundation of online communications today.
* It took until March 2011 for the AP Stylebook to shorten e-mail to just email. While hyphen-loving netizens mourned, social media praised the move—mainly because it was announced by the AP via Twitter.
Email Is a Must-Have
Email remains an incredibly productive and profitable channel for those who invest the time to build their permission-based email SUBSCRIBERS. Consider:
Email is ranked as the “Most Effective Marketing Tactic” by a majority of both B2C (63 percent) and B2B (58 percent) marketers.9
Email drives 20 percent or more of the revenues for nearly half of companies recently surveyed by the DMA.10
In a recent survey of online retailers, email SUBSCRIBERS were found to be 11 percent more valuable than average CUSTOMERS.11
Email is also an incredibly flexible medium, used for:
Alerts
Content syndication
Customer service communications
Lead nurturing
Order communications
Receipts
Service notifications
Tickets
Boarding passes
Coupons
Event notifications
Newsletters
Promotions
Reminders
Shipping communications
Here are just a few of the millions of companies benefitting from email:
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (@DenverCenter) realized a 738 percent ROI from a single email marketing campaign targeting 40,000 lapsed PATRONS.12
eBags (@eBags) estimates that the acquisition of 28,000 email SUBSCRIBERS and 46,000 Facebook FANS via a recent cross-channel campaign netted over $400,000 in revenue and an average value per email SUBSCRIBER of $15.13
The Thomas Cook Group (@ThomasCookUK) leveraged its data to create a personalized email experience with localized deals for each of its customers. Open rates shot up to over 50 percent, and a single email generated over $10,000 in sales from just one corporate client.14
It’s a fool’s errand to try to capture all the ways email is contributing to the bottom lines of recognizable brands. Accordingly, if you’re in need of some great case studies regarding email SUBSCRIBER profitability, I highly recommend checking out www.MarketingSherpa.com (@MarketingSherpa).
Email works in large part because it is familiar, predictable, and linear. Email inbox visitors are rarely subjected to the kind of wholesale design changes found annually on Facebook, and bold fonts make it clear where their new email messages begin and end. Mobile devices have further conditioned consumers to check their new messages regularly—if nothing else than to make the bold font (or “little red dot” on the iPhone email app) disappear.
Even as email volume increases and competition for consumer attention continues to grow, email marketing will continue to thrive and survive. Why? Because despite all of the “death of email” predictions over the years, no new proprietary audience channel commands the consumer adoption, message flexibility, and direct-to-consumer control that email does. In short, if you aren’t building an email SUBSCRIBER audience, you’re likely missing out on what could be a primary revenue and reengagement driver for your company.
SNAPSHOT: EMAIL
FIRST CONSUMER EMAIL SERVICE: Early 1980s (CompuServe)15
PROPRIETARY AUDIENCES: JOINERS (SUBSCRIBERS). Capable of influencing all other proprietary audience types—SEEKERS, AMPLIFIERS, FANS, and FOLLOWERS.
EFFORT REQUIRED: Varies depending on program complexity and automation efforts.
WHO OWNS THE DATA: You own SUBSCRIBER data whether it resides in your servers or that of your Email Service Provider (ESP).
USERS WORLDWIDE: As of 2013, there are an estimated 2.317 billion email users and 4.657 billion email accounts worldwide.16
SKILLS REQUIRED: Coding, copywriting, data integration, design, strategy, and performance analysis.
GATEKEEPERS: Internet/Mail Service Providers (ISPs/MSPs: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, etc.); corporate mail clients/IT departments; spam filtering software; industry watchdogs (Spamhaus, etc.)
STRENGTHS: Channel ubiquity, stability, flexibility, measurability (via click tracking), and cost-effectiveness.
Highest ROI of any direct messaging channel and preferred consumer channel for permission-based alerts, receipts, and marketing messages.17
Top channel for social sharing (Facebook is second).
High degree of personalization and testing optimization possible using demographic, performance, and behavioral data.
Factory-installed app on all smartphones and tablets, and a top smartphone activity among 18–44-year-olds.18
Email address is near-ubiquitous requirement for nearly all types of online registration (e-commerce, social networks, etc.). This reinforces the use of email even among younger consumers.