NewsLine Column: Email Makes Its Mark
Email marketing budgets have grown significantly over the past few years and despite the growing intolerance towards spam, Mike Colling, managing director of direct marketing agency, Mike Colling & Company, argues that email has joined the ranks of mainstream media.
Last month saw the merger of two UK trade bodies, as the Email Marketing Association (eMMa), joined forces with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). This brings the expertise of the early email marketing practitioners into the fold of Europe’s largest marketing trade body. It reflects the importance of email within the marketing mix and highlights the need for mass marketers to ensure they promote and reinforce best practice in email.
The move also reflects the coming of age of email. 50% of the UK is now online and email is the number one online activity. 90% of internet users use email, with 75% checking their email before doing anything else when they go online. It is now part of our hourly lives, rather than our daily lives, with many of us checking email five or more times a day.
Email is where we access our information and views of the online world. 58% of those online say they discover new products or services from email, and 78% of online shoppers have purchased a product as a direct result of an email. There is also compelling evidence to show that email influences offline buying patterns as well.
So is this evidence influencing marketing budgets? It certainly is! Direct mail and email are two of the few media to show consistent growth over the last two years, growth that is forecast to continue. Forrester Research records email’s share of online budget rising from 8% in 2001 to 25% in 2002, and forecasts it to grow to 30% next year. DoubleClick suggest that email budgets have grown by more than 30% in 2002/2001. Direct mail is notable as the only other mass medium to show revenue growth in 2001/2000.
But despite the convergence in trade bodies and the vibrant growth rates of these two mediums, email and direct mail are fundamentally different. The differences are best highlighted in two areas: the use of the medium to acquire new customers and the frequency with which a company can talk to current customers.
Direct mail is a very effective medium for acquiring new customers. Lists of prospective customers are readily available, the majority of consumers do not object to receiving unsolicited mail and most of us still receive relatively little direct mail. (The average adult receives just 3 DM letters per month).
However, email is a very poor medium with which to acquire new customers. Relatively few lists are available; those that are, are a mixed bag and crucially, there is a consumer convention that objects to unsolicited email. Add to this the volume of emails the average adult receives (around 35 emails per day according to the Gallup Poll) and your unsolicited message is lost in the clutter of the busy inbox.
Despite this, email is a great medium with which to develop customer relationships. The costs associated with paper mailings mean that few companies can afford to send mailings to even their best customers more than once per month. This means that every mailing has to work hard to sell a product and is pre-planned months ahead.
Emails are cheaper and faster. This typically results in a weekly communication to customers, which can become a conversation and not a constant sales pitch. Marketers can ask questions of their customers and can adapt their responses in real time, to both market conditions and the answers they receive. Email gives us the start of a relationship, rather than one sided shouting, infrequently and at a distance.
Just one potential iceberg lies ahead. 75% of email boxes in the UK receive at least one piece of Spam per day. 90% of email users cite Spam as their biggest concern and 60% are now deleting emails without reading them. Half of all email users now use an automated sorting programme that separates out unsolicited mail from that from friends and family. The Spam goes into a bulk folder and once it’s there, its dead. But even this may turn out to be a blessing in disguise – raising the bar for marketers and forcing them to create communications of value and relevance that consumers accord the status of friends and family. A challenge perhaps, but also an opportunity that should be maximised.
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