Posted on October 13th, 2008 by Marc Micheli | Filed under: Soap Box
Email is an excellent medium for the agent or dealer audience. They are willing 'brand participants.'
The blogger’s opinion in the shared post below is consistent with our own observations concerning the role of email marketing in today’s media mix. It is true that email has increasingly become an effective retention tool, while it has declined as an acquisition tool.
There are ways, however, to leverage email as a medium in your customer acquisition efforts. In particular, sponsored ads within existing email newsletters can bring relevant content to an audience already loyal to the sender, thereby providing reach to new potential subscribers. Publishers who sell ad space in their email newsletters are on to this, and that can be a good alternative.
Meanwhile, the in-house email list has emerged as one of the most valuable assets of the corporate marketing department. That’s because it can’t be bought – the only effective email list is the one that’s earned. When speaking of companies’ in-house email initiatives, this blogger from E-consultancy puts it well:
| The use of email marketing to drive customer acquisition is in significant, and terminal, decline. |
| email is not a customer acquisition tool. In fact it never has been, but in the early years of the media, the novelty of receiving email meant that acquisition and lead generation emails were opened and clicked on. |
| Any email marketer who thinks that consumers expect and deserve regular, mass email marketing will find their reputation and results flowing rapidly down the toilet.
Email marketing is a retention tool, and used cleverly it is the ‘killer app’. |
| Cold emailing as a core business proposition just doesn’t work because the need to flog as much data as possible is totally contrary to email marketing’s core requirements – targeting, relevance and quality. |
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Tags: acquisition, CRM, customer, email, list, marketing, retention
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