The Rise of Email Marketing

Everything you read and hear about in today’s marketplace is how bad the economy is.  People are getting laid off, revenue  and profit forecasts are dwindling and of course, marketing budgets are shrinking.   Many executives will now look at more cost effective ways to interrupt the consumer with marketing messages and one of the mediums will be email marketing.  Email marketing is looked at by many as cost effective with a potential for a high rate of return, so there will be an inevitable push by many in organizations to either start emailing or ramp up to do more email.

The other day, I was in my local coffee shop and I overheard one person was talking to another about how her boss came to her and said something about wanting to do email marketing.  He told her that he wanted her to research how they can get their customers email address so that they can start to send email to them to tell them about there products.  She was complaining that she had no idea what he was talking about since she was only in IT and she didn’t know how she would find the time to figure out how to get emails and then send out emails along with doing her full time job.

Then, the other day as I was driving home I heard a radio spot on a local station from a well known ESP touting that email marketing was the next biggest thing and that companies should try their solution risk free for 30 days to see what the results are.  All I kept thinking during this spot is that the fact the email marketing is being touted as a near free, easy and out of the box thing for companies big and small to engage in.

Rather than pontificate in this post about the value of email and how companies should be engaged in doing email the only thing I can say is that I think we are staring at a glorious mountain here.  People are going to look for cheaper ways to communicate with their customers and email will be one of the ways for them to do so.  As a person that has been on the client side of email for 8 years, I am here to help and offer advice anyway I can.  When I don’t know something or want to learn, I reach out to those that know more than me to be that sponge to do it right rather than cobble it together.

If you are an email professional, take a pledge with me.  Take a pledge to help those who want to get started in email and do so in some cases without the thought of financial gain.  By doing so, we can make our industry do great things and we as a community of professionals can hold our head high in knowing that we care enough about what we do to spread the gospel of good email practices.

Lets be the Jedi’s of email and take as many paduan’s on as we can.

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email, email marketing, email education, email management, engagement, email strategy, strategy, training

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