Article written for SocialMediatoday.com
Email marketing is often misunderstood. Email Marketing professionals often battle misconceptions, misunderstandings and misanthropy in explaining what we do and why we do it. From defending our email campaigns from the CFO who thinks we “send free letters” to convincing our mom’s that we aren’t those evil spammers, it seems the email marketer is often maligned from every side.
Most people see us as one of these stereotypes:
- Evil spammers filling inboxes with unwanted junk
- Boring ‘newsletter’ writers filling inboxes with unwanted junk
- Brilliant marketers creating value and ROI at the heart of digital marketing (Well maybe not too many on this one…)
Unfortunately some of these misconceptions come from our own behaviors. Some are obvious, some are simple mistakes and some are old practices that need to change. For the last few months I have been working with some of the best email-marketing professionals on adding better data intelligence to email marketing to change the behaviors that create these misconceptions. From misunderstandings to mistaken assumptions, these same points bubble up consistently regardless of industry.
I developed a fresh appreciation for the challenges of building and executing an effective email-marketing program. The trial of never ending daily and weekly deadlines, outdated and inflexible tools and inconsistent executive buy-in make email marketing an all too often thankless job. It pays the most bills in the integrated marketing house, but it seldom gets the respect, let alone the budget it deserves, considering it’s compelling ROI of over $40 per dollar spent.
With that in mind, here are the 5 things that I wish everyone knew about email marketing.
