Is Email Marketing Still Effective?

I don't know about you, but I receive too many emails. I have begun taking advantage of the "unsubscribe" option to try to reduce the amount of clutter in my inbox. Does that mean that email as a marketing device has lost its usefulness?

Years ago, when I was just starting my consulting business, I used email to stay in touch with my clients and/or potential clients. I developed a list of email addresses from everyone who attended my seminars or who I met in the course of doing business. Every month (note - month, not day or even week) I would issue a short two or three paragraph tip about marketing, followed by my "signature". I received many compliments about my monthly communiques, and ultimately new business - either from the recipients or from their referrals to others. It was an effective way to establish myself and raise my profile.

I did this email marketing for about two or three years until too many others began to do the same thing. At the point where I felt my messages were getting drowned in a sea of other emails, I stopped. Why? If email is free and the opportunity to be in front of my prospects is very important, why would I abandon it?

First, email is not free. Every month I had to spend time - valuable time - crafting a new message. Email marketing is only as effective as the value of the message. If you don't have the time (or the skill) to send a useful message, don't bother. After a while, your recipients will decide your messages are not worth reading. Even if they do not "opt out", they may remove you from their approved senders list and your messages will go directly to spam. When/if that happens, your ability to communicate on more urgent matters is severely restrained.

Second, once email marketing became THE choice of marketers and small businesses everywhere, the inbox became too crowded. SPAM was born and even legitimate communications could be considered SPAM.

Third, email marketers have become so aggressive that, I think, they ultimately hurt more than help themselves. And that makes it difficult for those of us who tried to use this medium responsibly. I know I have even stopped contributing to causes in which I believe because daily emails asking for more money just became too annoying. If you do not know your recipients, you can not effectively communicate via email and thus are simply wasting your time.

So, here is what I recommend to anyone who wants to try, or continue to use, email marketing.
1. Keep your postings short, entertaining, and helpful.
2. Confine your frequency to no more than once every two weeks. Frequently enough to retain TOMA, yet not so frequent as to become a pest.
3. Encourage responses to engage your audience. Submit a poll, ask a pertinent question, request input on an issue.

Email marketing might be effective again, but only if you use it strategically.