Do People Still Read Your Emails?

I do not believe for a second that email marketing is dying out. As marketers, we tend to be more insular in our thinking that our subscribers and customers look at the world as we do. At any given time, I also may subscribe to 100 or more email lists. But I would bet the average person outside the internet business or marketing realm is on far fewer lists.

Even it they are, there's so much crap out there, that even an average copywriter can have some success - as long as it's a genuinely targeted list.

Michael has a valid point here - Plus...

While everything online has been changing at the speed of sound over the last decade the one thing that remains virtually unchanged, apart from a few tools, is in fact email marketing.

Any company cannot survive without building a list and marketing to that list! For anyone to think they don't need a list are leaving a lot of money on the table and are just a few bad days away from going broke!

Money is still being made via email marketing... actually the return on investment is $45.06 for every dollar spent via email marketing compared to $19.94 ROI for all other internet marketing strategies combined.

There will also be a huge increase in expenditure and investment into email marketing over the next few years according to MailerMailer...

Mike Hill

I would certainly review the lists I am on and only follow people who provide original and useful information or you can waste a lot of time with email.
On the other hand if you join numerous credit lists (with a throw away email) in order to earn advertising credits, you end up clicking on the links without reading the ads. If everyone on such lists is doing the same thing, the chances of generating traffic must be very small. Yet, if you perservere your ads will be seen. Consistent effort and repetition is needed, so you have to keep at it to get noticed.

Does anyone have the real numbers on email marketing. I am getting ready to try market to rented list. It is a targeted list. What can I expect as far as open, click and conversion rate. I understand it varies widely based quality of the list and quality of the email piece, but what are the industry averages?

Email Marketing is certainly not dead. It needs some refinining. These days, less and less valuable content are being sent and more and more sales pitches and affilate coated emails are being sent.And more and more people are joining the bandwagon.

I almost resorted to abandoning an email account until I rose up to the challenge of unsubscribing from these lists one by one- really daunting challenge!

Nonetheless, there are still a lot of good ones that stick to the 80/20 rule- or does it really matter these days?

The bottom line is how good you are at developing a relationship with your list. As marketers, we all tend to like to throw around the "value" buzz word as if it is concrete. In reality people will open and read your emails for a variety of reasons.....

1. Your personality and story connects with them....

2. They heard from a friend, forum....whatever...that your material is a must read for anyone serious with marketing...

3. You entertain them for whatever reason...

4. Oh, yeah...and then there is the value you bring to the table...

That is just a few off the top of my head but I am sure you get the point.

An email is only as good as the subject line.

If it doesn't immediately draw the recipient's interest, it won't get opened no matter how well your list is targeted.

Because most people do subscribe to a number of different lists, your emails compete against others for the attention of the recipient. On average, I read about 20 to 40% of what comes into my inbox every day...no matter who it has come from.

One thing that I've noticed is that I tend to open emails that have my name in the subject line more often than not...just seems more personalised. Aside from that there are a few trigger words that spark my interest in opening and reading more. "Free" almost always works, but it depends on the individual's interests.

One marketer to whom I subscribe changes his "from" tag. I don't have a "white list" and physically scan all emails and as I didn't recognise the name, his emails deliberately didn't get opened for about nine months...until I opened one by mistake and realised who it was from.

Email is still the easiest and most effective way to communicate with potential clients...and will be for some time to come, but the effectiveness of your emails depend on the recipient reading them. Kepp track of what have been good subject lines for you and stick to a winning formula.

Alex

this is really a hugely debatable topic, i dont really think most of the normal users (non marketers, non affiliates) read them, it directly goes to their trash. coz i have seen this personally my wife who is not a marketer herslf, when i send her mails, coz she is in my mailing list, she doesnt read them, though she doesnt read them also, coz its from me.
i have really stopped sending mailers to everybody now, i send mailers to any those who i think would appreciate my product. i prefer posting in forums rather than sending emails

There's some great stuff in this free newsletter. I get it every morning and it's very enlightening.

Market research & statistics: Internet marketing, advertising & demographics - eMarketer

Check out the article on open and click through rates from last week.

E-Mail Marketing Open and Click-Through Rates - eMarketer

Email marketing isn't dying out cuz targeted emails do reach the right audience ... It is we who subscribe to every other thing that even remotely interests us ... So what I believe is, in order to get the most out of the lists you subscribe to, make sure it's something you are really interested in and would want to keep learning about that particular subject.

It depends on where its coming from. And if it does go to my spam folder, i dont review it anymore, i automatically delete them

I'm not reading as much as I used to. I'm kind of "burned out" of Internet Marketing newsletters. I'm just tired of opening emails to read ads. Jakob Nielsen's newsletter about web and usability and how he integrates product/service promotion with them is how I intend to structure my future newsletters.

Tyrus