With spring officially starting this coming weekend (Sunday, March 20), the promise of new beginnings is in the air. The season signifies rebirth and renewal as nature begins its circle of life once again.

One marketing element that won’t need resurrecting is email, despite claims a few years back that the emergence of social media meant email had lost its luster. Quite the contrary: email marketing is alive and well. In fact, it’s more relevant, pervasive and stronger than ever.

I recently co-wrote a book on this very subject, “140 Reasons Email Marketing is Not Dead: Building Success around Email Marketing." In addition to being available on Amazon, the book's content is also being offered by our friends at Aha Amplifier at no charge on their website. To produce this content, I collaborated with a team of brilliant marketing thought leaders including Mitchell Levy, Brian Carroll, Kneko Burney, Linda West, Liz Miller and Rachel Rosin.

Each of us contributed our perspectives and experiences with email marketing. Together, we describe why many businesses, especially those in B2B markets, see more success with email than any other marketing channel. The book provides techniques and strategies for using email to build business success, and describes best practices for email testing, segmentation, click-through rates, conversion rates and more.

A few of my favorite excerpts include:

• Linda West, Act-On Software: “Email marketing is not dead. Email marketing as we knew it is dead.” A key point in the book is that while email marketing is not dead, many previously employed methods of conducting email campaigns certainly are. Indeed, blindly shot-gunning mass-marketed messages may have once generated eyeballs and even responses. But today, with the proliferation and pervasiveness of email – as well as spam filters and junk mail boxes – recipients now are much more savvy and selective about what they receive, read and respond to. That’s why effective email campaigns today require a much more focused and targeted approach to be successful.
• Liz Miller, The CMO Council: “The question is not: “Is email effective? It should be: Am I delivering the right content through this channel?” There is certainly no doubt that email has survived and thrived as a marketing medium. The supporting stats are abundant: For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is $44.25. And, 89% of marketers say that email is their primary channel for lead generation. But email is much more than a commoditized means for viewing commercials; it is the predominant and preferred way most people in business and in their personal lives communicate and receive information. As a result, to draw attention and initiate a buying journey, email must be offering something of value to the recipient. In addition, it requires marketers to deliver the right message, to the right audience -- at the right time. And as data increasingly fuels the capability for all of these components to come together, email marketing is now being viewed as both an art and a science.
• Brian Carroll, MECLABS/Marketing Sherpa: “Email supports dialogue between people. When you’re selling, it’s about building relationships and generating leads.” When email first emerged, it was considered to be merely another sales channel, and marketers simply parroted existing tried and true offline sales messages and techniques. As times changed and email grew in its pervasiveness, traditional sales messages and tactics became less effective. Instead, email emerged as the perfect medium for marketers to initiate and build relationships with their prospects in order to help them along their buying journey. These days – especially with younger demographics – establishing that trusted relationship is fast emerging as a required prerequisite for prospects to continue their relationship with you with the promise of eventually becoming a customer.
• Rachel Rosin, Act-On Software: “Email marketing is definitely not dead, but the techniques and measurements for success have changed.” Email techniques and tactics continue to change with the times. For example, here on the blog we’ve discussed the need for email to work – and work well -- on mobile devices. We’ve also talked about the increasing use of video, how to automate email and ensure email deliverability. We’ve also made a case for the use of evolving technologies and meeting the changing desires of emerging demographics. In addition, the metrics used to measure email program success have also evolved: clickthroughs and conversions are key for email campaign status, while bounce and list growth are great indicators of overall email list health. But overall ROI is the metric of most interest to the C-suite. The point here is that email marketing is a discipline unto itself -- one that marketers must stay ahead of in order to be successful and advance their careers.

As we enter the season of renewal, now is the time to make use of the advice from our team of experts to reignite your email marketing ROI. The book is designed to be inspiring and easy to read. Download your copy today.

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Refuel and refresh your email marketing ROI. Consider giving OMI marketing data a try. OMI allows you to reach targeted contacts with precision and accuracy. Click here for more information and contact us to get started. And don’t forget to download your copy of “140 Reasons Email Marketing is Not Dead: Building Success Around Email Marketing,” now available on Amazon or via complimentary access on the Aha Amplifier website.