When people start talking about communication delivery as being cheap or free, it's often indicative of the amount of effort they tend to expend. This is because the perception of FREE skews how you think about the tool. It's one of those "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" things.
Marketing Sherpa recently surveyed marketers and learned that 48% of them don't place a high value on email, considering it either cheap or free.
Interestingly they also said that the effectiveness of email was decreasing.
I'm seeing a correlation, here...
These are probably the marketers who send out mass, product-oriented, company-focused pablum and hope for the best. Only they're disappointed by the metrics and results.
Treating a powerful tool with a lack of respect turns on you every time, regardless of what it costs.
When you consider what goes into an email, there are a number of components that influence it's reception by your audience:
- Send name
- Subject line
- Email message
- Call to action or offer
- Content at the other end of the link(s) in the email
- Creative design of both the email and the content/landing page
Each one of those things impacts the relevance interpretation by each individual recipient. Are any of those components free?
Nope. Not a one. At least not for the 48% who place a high value on email, of which 75% say they're seeing increased effectiveness from their email initiatives. They may use inexpensive tools to deliver the communications, but because they produce valuable results from their efforts, they invest more in ensuring those results continue to improve.
They're paying staff or outsourced talent responsible for developing those concepts, creative and content. They're investing with time and expertise to develop messaging that resonates with their audiences.
They're also likely investing in research into analytics, customer behavior and responses to determine which messaging is more valuable and engaging to particular segments of their lead database. And then they're designing emails that deliver value to those segments.
None of this is free. But it certainly is a valid investment capable of transforming the level of engagement developed with a higher percentage of targeted recipients.
How about you? Are you seeing your email effectiveness increase or decrease? What reasons would you assign to that outcome?
