This is the question that most Digital Marketers have thought about. In a recent research by Sherastone, only 2 digital marketing “tactics” had increased in budget in 2009; they are email and social media.

Social Media is NOT killing Email Marketing

I don’t think email marketing is dying. I think marketers need to really see social media as a strategy, and email marketing can be one of the “social media marketing tactics” when they are integrated well.

To give, not to sell through email

For example, social media as a whole is a great channel to collect relevant email addresses because it allows us to target personalities and interests through conversations, the key to be successful in email marketing is to provide value to the subscribers. Instead of thinking about what they might be interested in purchasing, marketers should think about what they might be interested in receiving. Instead of following the Direct Marketing nature of Email Marketing, marketers should use it more as a branding and community building tactic that goes hand in hand with social media.

Although measuring is way more complicated than direct marketing, there are still ways to do it with well-planned KPIs.

Email “Selling” is Dead

Direct email marketing (email selling) is dead, people don’t just “purchase” after seeing email promotions. However, with the help of social media, email marketing can still be a very powerful and profitable tactic when the message and execution is tailored to the target.

When I first learnt about direct marketing, it was all about envelopes and mailboxes. Then email marketing came out. What’s now?

I’m sure many of us are aware of the push and pull concept in marketing these days. Direct marketing doesn’t have to be “direct” anymore. The whole point of DM is to customize the ideas/ messages and send them to the segmented targets directly, with a call-to-action most of the time.

Blogs and Twitter can do almost the same. Interested targets can subscribe to a blog, or follow a company’s tweets, so that companies can “direct” the customized call-to-action to these segments. As I said on my previous post Spam and Junkmail killing Direct Marketing, people start to care less about what they recieve in the mailboxes. Instead of spending money on printing or costly email databases, companies should start migrating and allocate more resources on these newer kind of “indirect” direct marketing tactics.

In both traditional marketing principles and Digital Marketing, direct marketing (direct mail) has always been an effective way to target potential clients. I have 2 main email accounts, one of course is for important emails, the other one is basically for junk mails as I like to see what e-mail marketing strategies companies are practicing.

So one day, I was thinking… I am a Digital Marketer, and for that reason I opened a seperate email account only for “junk” mails and spams, what about the others who have little or no knowledge in the digital marketing field. It’s quite obvious, they simply get both important emails, and useless promotional emails in the mailbox. Why did I say “useless”? Think about the ratio between the useful promotional emails that people actually want to read, and the ones they just delete directly without opening them.

Spams and desperate marketers are slowly killing the beauty of direct marketing on the internet, but is it entirely their fault? Why are spammers still sending pathetic Viagra emails? It’s because it still works on SOME people. And it always make my job a little harder as a “White Hat” marketer.