Comments on: The Value of Email Marketing

By: fabrizio

fabrizio — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 15:35:32 +0000

Our e-mail marketing is a great success, every time we send our Newsletter our sales increase of at least 50-60% in the two-three following days.

By: bshroyer

bshroyer — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 02:46:32 +0000

I agree that a targeted relevant preference-based email campaign will always deliver better results. Check out our whitepaper on the subject entitled “How to Make your Email Campaigns More Relevant.”

By: pbradish

pbradish — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:58:33 +0000

I do not have an exact figure, but email marketing has worked very - very well for my ecommerce business.

By: Sgt. Baboon

Sgt. Baboon — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 03:19:31 +0000

The problem isn’t that email isn’t targeted, it’s that Borders isn’t targeting. Email marketing can be very successful if done properly, and targeting is a key ingredient.

By: Ivy

Ivy — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 20:35:52 +0000

The problem with email is it’s not targeted to the user. I get emails from Borders and they are always sending offers that are completely opposite of my buying habits. I mean, they know what I’m buying when and it’s not kids’ books, but they continually send out broad specials just hoping it might click with someone.

Please, please, Borders and all the other companies out there, take a hint from Amazon and give your customers targeted, relevant content.

Here’s a full rant if anyone cares:

End rant.

By: Mark Harbottle

Mark Harbottle — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 04:56:57 +0000

Very true Jeanne!

By: JeanneJennings

JeanneJennings — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:10:45 +0000

Hi,

Jeanne here, the author of the Email Marketing Kit.

wwb_99, I could not agree with you more when you question that $51.45 figure — many of us in the industry question that as an AVERAGE return. That said, many companies are doing very well with email.

One small company (the case study appears in the book) returned $13 for each $1 they spent on email marketing programs over the course of a year. Their best email campaign (total cost about $800) brought in over $28,000 — a return of $35 for each dollar they spent.

Regarding open rates — they were somewhat controversial when they first went mainstream, around the year 2000. While they aren’t an absolute measure of opens (since there is some margin of error both ways) they are a good relative measure, especially when you are comparing them across the same list. And they are tremendously helpful when you’re testing to optimize from and subject lines.

Cheers!
Jeanne

By: Sachin

Sachin — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:39:16 +0000

Email marketing does produce the result, but certainly not that good enough when compared to prime advertising.

By: wwb_99

wwb_99 — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:55:10 +0000

On average, email marketing generates an average return of $51.45 for every dollar spent in 2006, according to the Direct Marketing Association.

Having worked in the washington trade association for years, I can tell you that you should never believe anything a trade association says. Ever.

Oh, and my big technical rant of the month on email marketing is that “open rates” are a voodoo stat. Fundamentally, one can only measure if certain images have been downloaded by client software. Given modern clients default to not downloading images, you are generally going to get too low a number. OTOH, if someone does download the image but just clicks on a message to delete it, and it loads in the preview pane, you are going to get a false positive hit.

To quote someone famous: “There are lies, there are damned lies and then there are statisitcs.”