Is Email Marketing Passe?
The number of emails that I receive each day continues to border on the ridiculous. Half aren’t relevant. Most don’t know my role or what I buy. I play whack-a-mole with the unsubscribe button and typically don’t like the hoops they make me go through to tell them why I want to unsubscribe. How about: “I never asked for this, your content isn’t relevant, and you haven’t taken the time to know what I do or what I buy or what I’m interested in.”
It’s spam, any way you cut it, but there’s no polite way to really say that in a B2B context when a CEO might be hiring, buying an accounting system, needing travel services, or any of a litany of other things. It’s guesswork, and most of the time, the emails just plain suck.
But I decided to think about it analytically and not emotionally. So, I went out to two of my esteemed colleagues who are experts in the marketing arena. One was Randy Giusto, our VP & Lead Analyst who tracks and analyzes the media/marketing space and email as a tool that marketers use. The other was Larry Friedberg, an experienced CMO, and expert in B2B marketing.
Here’s what Larry said:
“…I think Slack is killing intra-company email. But the reality is that email is still the only game in town for inter-company communication where the recipient is not known to the sender. However, if you send an email, you better know me, be a referral from someone I know or take the time in advance (before you email) to know who I am and what is important to me.”
I think it’s safe to say that most marketers aren’t doing that. Larry also told me that he thinks the way of selling by dialing for volume, SDRs making appointments and smiling and dialing, is going the way of the dinosaur. He thinks intimate meetings, F2F, and less is more will prevail longer term. I happen to agree.
And from Randy:
“What timing! Here’s a line from my first B2B marketer report just sent to peer review: ‘The lifespan of an email is next to nothing. Direct mail is expensive but more survivable.’ It came out of the CMO interviews we just did.
Email is getting long in the tooth. Younger gens tune out, but it’s still heavily used.
I got an email today offering me a $300 Amazon Gift Card from Salesforce to be part of an online focus group over GoToMeeting next week, to share my thoughts about how I forecast my future staffing needs and create staffing schedules within the Customer Service and Contact Centers inside Salesforce Service Cloud. It was a reminder email from one sent Wednesday.
Even Salesforce’s data is BAD! They didn’t take the time to know me even though I use their platform daily. You would clearly think that they, if anybody, could see that I’m not an HCM professional.”
So there you have it: Even Salesforce can’t quite get it right. Time to quit spraying and praying.