The Future of Email Marketing By Abbie Drew Oct 5, 2006

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Email remains the number one activity of online users but will this continue?

Are new hot trends of viewing online videos, playing online games and/or socializing in online networks going to overtake email as the most common online activity?

It is highly unlikely.

Just consider this recent statistic from Nielsen//NetRatings: Yahoo! Mail captured more than 40% of all online display ads last month — far more than any other single site. The next closest site, MySpace.com a social networking site, only saw 16% of display ads.

Clearly most users still go online to visit their email box than to participate in any other activity.

For email marketers this is great news, you know when you email prospects / customers your messages are being sent to a place where they have a chance of being seen.

The bad news is online users definition of spam is changing. Previously, email that was not requested was what users called Spam. So we as email marketers ensured that our email was all opt-in. Now, according to the new user definitions, any email that is not relevant to them, they consider spam.

So even as a permission email marketer, with the new spam definition, you may be being labeled as a spammer. You may think this new trend is outrageous, but in the world of email marketing what the online user decides is what become reality.

How can you prepare for this future of email marketing? How do you avoid being labeled a spammer but still keep your email marketing returns high?

Here are 3 points to evaluate with your email marketing promotions:

1) Be Relevant

Relevancy is the new buzz word in the email marketing industry. It basically means you need to send emails the consumer actually wants.

And right now, most email marketers are not sending relevant email. According to Jupiter Research - out of every 100 permission emails you send, 70 people are saying “go away”. When a user says “go away”, he either deletes your email, clicks to unsubscribe or clicks to report your email as spam to his ISP.

You get no benefit from emailing non-relevant messages and you often loose opt-in subscribers due to poor targeting. In worse case scenarios you potentially could have problems with ISPs if too many subscribers report your email as spam.

To improve your email marketing results look for better ways to target and time your emails. For example, send different emails based upon the click throughs of your subscribers. Those subscribers who are more active, send them more emails. Those subscribers who never click – remove from your list.

Or time your emails based on past purchases. For example a customer who bought ink for a printer, don’t send another email for more ink until a few months later, when the ink has likely been used up.

Divide up your list into smaller sub lists and give users choices. Let subscribers choose their preference of subject matter and frequency of mailings.

2) Short and Sweet

Studies show again and again that short, personalized emails have better open rates and better click throughs.

Keep your subject lines under 35 characters. When possible put personalization in the subject and in the body of the message. But be careful not to go over board with name personalization. A “Hi name” is more than enough, your entire message does not need to be riddled with the subscriber’s name.

Be brief in your emails. If your email message can be put into the space of the first screen you will get better results. EmailLabs found that readers spend only 15-20 seconds on each email they open so make sure you are succinct.

3) Use the Web

Place the bulk of your content on a website and link to it in a short email. The web is the place for the long sales letter and/or your cool pictures and images.

And what about that new video you made?

Yes, if you look around you will see more and more video appearing on the web. Recently, I’ve noticed that after watching TV shows, they’ll promote that show to be viewable online at a web site.

All evidence indicates video is going to be huge online. If you haven’t yet made a video for your web site, it looks like you should start thinking about one. Will video replace sales copy? I doubt it. But having video on your site is going to be a powerful sales tool.

However, be sure you do not send your video in your email!

While more and more people are getting broadband connections, there are still a lot of users using dial-up. And believe me they do not want to wait for your video clip to download by email. I would say even most broadband users don’t want to wait for big video files to download to their email.

Stick with simple text or simple HTML emails and send your subscribers to your web site to see the great content or sales message you want to share.


If your email marketing results have been on the decline test out these 3 strategies. They work!

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Abbie Drew
DEMC Editor

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