A recent question on LinkedIn Answers – Direct Marketing asked: “E-mail marketing – redundant direct marketing tool?” All 11 respondents, including mine, answered largely in the negative.
The ascendancy of social media spells anything but death of email. On the contrary, email marketing can be effective as a direct marketing tool, though its emphasis has shifted, generally speaking, from lead generation to relationship cultivation.
What is the role of email in sustainable marketing? How can sustainable marketers use email to support their triple bottom line?
Email’s on the money
On financial effectiveness, email beats any other direct marketing tool. Once set up, the marginal cost of creating each piece or sending to an additional recipient is relatively tiny. Of course, the more recipients, the smaller the cost per recipient.
In addition, consider that response rates for mail average 3.65%, while for email open rates stand at 14.92%, click through rates at 9.36% and conversion rates at 5.26%. No wonder marketers are shifting to email for their direct marketing needs.
The above figures are for house lists, i.e. permission-based or opt-in lists built in-house, which are the only type relevant for sustainable marketing. Also note the above figures are averages for all mail and email; figures may vary between industries or companies. For example, the average open rate for my company’s monthly email newsletter is 38.9% while the click-through rate is 20.6%. (Please subscribe to The Sign e-newsletter in the Join section of the sidebar or here. Thanks!)
Email greenmail
Compared to print, the environmental impact of email is minuscule. According to a McAfee/ICF International study, greenhouse gas emissions associated with email amount to anywhere between 0.3 grams for spam email and 4 grams for legitimate email per email. A print piece with the same amount of content would emit more than 500 grams of CO2 (estimated, from a Forest Ethics report). Of course, even 0.3-4 grams per email can add up for a sizable footprint.
Email and the people
The final test of email’s sustainability is from the social standpoint. Here, email is a double-edged marketing sword: as spam or other non-permission based email, it’s an interruption and as such socially unsustainable. With opt-in and valuable content it can play a constructive role for both the marketer and recipient. (In Part 2 on Thursday, I’ll get to the practicalities of making email marketing more socially sustainable.)
In sum, while marketing wins on the Prosperity and Planet bottom lines, the balance of email’s sustainability hangs on the People bottom line.
What’s your experience with email marketing? Is it a redundant or useful marketing tool these days? Have any success or horror stories to share?
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Image credit: architekt
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I recently had a client that brought in a 35.2% response rate from an PURL email campaign using Purlem. It was very simple and effective. I can forward you some details on the campaign if your interested.
@Marty: Nice results, thanks for sharing.