The rebirth of e-mails
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008Own up, for the best part of the millenium, you’ve thought about e-mail marketing the same way you do about your odd cousin from the country, the one that stares at sheep in an unhealthy way.
It’s just not as fun as search, is it? Well bu-huu.
E-mail is here, you have to deal with it.
Yes, your newsletter program may feel waaay less cool to work with compared to logging in to AdWords for the umptenth time to check your CR.
Yes, your newsletter program is more work, your average e-mail needs more content than a new AdGroup text… plus, your subscribers actually expect things from you.
But, since e-mail IS here, you might as well do your best - and whatever you do, don’t burn your subscriber base just because you got bored with it.
Why? Well, besides the fact that it’s probably profitable right now (I’ll help you find out if you don’t know how), here’s another pretty strong hint: Today, everyone you know is in at least one SEO project, right? If you just think about the absurdity of every half-assed company churning out a million static SEO pages, it’s pretty obvious this insanity will come to an end sooner or later. Then you need to be prepared, because all of the organic search traffic will suddenly no longer materialize, and you and your competitors will all be bidding each other to death in AdWords. Now, if only there was some other way of reaching qualified leads - some forum where you will have the univided attention of your leads and be able to strengthen your relationship with them…….. (yes, it’s e-mail)
So, out of love, technology or panic, e-mail marketing WILL soon be reborn - we will refer to it as Digital Direct Marketing, or Permission Marketing 2.0, or something cooler than “the newsletter that Jane sends on Tuesdays”.
In emerging markets, gaining a large subscriber base is extra adventurous. Jared Blank and Vikram Shegal at tripmela.com is doing this right now. I think they aim at becoming the Indian version of travelzoo.com - well, I hope they succeed.
I’ll keep thinking about new ways to battle e-mail inertia.