When I Think Email Marketing I Think Spam!
When I first saw this month’s MIMA event was about email marketing I figured I could skip it. Mass emails and spamming are not my gig. Yup, that’s my first thought when I think email marketing – SPAM!
But yesterday as the MIMA event got underway I got curious. What does everybody else think of first when they hear email marketing? Do they have the same attitude as me? Why do I ignore email marketing when most other aspects of internet marketing really intrigue me? I’ve done a limited amount of email marketing in my past and know there is much more to it than spam blasting to a massive list of unsuspecting recipients. But for some reason email marketing has always been an easy topic for me to ignore in practice and study. I just have not been interested.
To quench my thirst for answers before my interest once again waned on the subject, I fired up the MIMA Live feed of the event (great feature by the way) along with Twitter and Twitter Search. I asked my fellow tweeters What do you think of first when you think of “Email Marketing”? The people I hang with on Twitter includes a good share of marketing type peeps so keep that in mind when reading their responses. Not all responses came from the marketing world though. Here are the replies I received….
AaronWeiche ROI
GraemeThickins that’s easy… spam 
justrobyn Ad/specials, and exposure campaigns to new or existing cust’s via email.
brichterv i think email marketing is great but somehow it gets misrepresented as spam
_Dave_E Spam. Irksome, at best.
leeodden Email marketing is still one of the best return on investment marketing tactics and ties in perfectly with social media marketing
DazzlinDonna The first thing I think of when I think of Email Marketing is Companies leverage existing client base to sell products to them in the future. Easier to sell to existing clients than to attain new ones.
martinbowling First thing I think of “spam” hehe
TwisterMc Are effective campaigns about the words or graphics?
RuudHein spam. carpet bombing. blast marketing. gimmicky. sell vs. help.
martinbowling We use email marketing but only as a communication devise we try not to do “pitchy” emails
RuudHein no, haven’t used. When I will it will be newsletter/list based; content w. sales
mjkeliher When I think “e-mail marketing,” I think “opt-out.” As in, you better give me an easy way to opt out and a load of reasons not to
GraemeThickins don’t use it personally..I’m an independent consultant who gets business by personal referral..but some of my clients (tech startups) use it
josephrueter Conversation is the preferred stance in most anything. Any medium executed in a way that helps conversation is a GO!
bigboxcar First thing I think: Difficult. It’s hard to accomplish a dynamite email marketing campaign. Especially for publishers. 2nd thing: Cheap.
Via Facebook I also heard from John Bonfield who said ‘I do EMM, so I may not be representative … anyway, here ya go: “Designed for a Preview Pane”‘
Now, after listening to Jeffrey K. Rohrs, VP of Marketing for ExactTarget give his presentation to MIMA members and reading through the tweets I received, my gut reaction to email marketing has gained some depth, intrigue, and appreciation. The thoughts of spam still linger when I think of email marketing, but they are not as strong. I’ve come out this with these bullet points to remember…
- Precision Marketing & Customization – use data & behavioral info to message when it is of greatest relevance to them.
- Email Marketing has a great ROI
- Get Creative in building your lists and monetizing them
- The pool of folks with email is much larger than that of social media, don’t lose sight of that
- People have the control, treat them well
- Learn and know your customers
Thanks to Jeffrey K. Rohrs for the great presentation and to all of those that tweeted in reply! You can follow Jeffrey Rohrs on Twitter. If you want to follow any of the people above on Twitter they are of quality tweetitude! If you want to follow me on Twitter you can catch me at @dohman. You can also find the archived video feed of the presentation at MIMA’s UstreamTv channel. And last, if you would like to share your first thoughts of email marketing, or help clue me in on something more, I would love to read them, leave a reply!
