Author: technorati

So, after all the excitement about Facebook and Twitter as communities and marketing panaceas, a recent study by McKinsey & Company reports something counter-intuitive: good, "old fashioned" e-mails prove to be 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined.

That is, if your goal is to acquire customers, and not just share the latest family news or travel experience.

Apparently, says Hotelmarketing, the reason is simple: 91 percent of all US consumers still use e-mail daily. And "the rate at which e-mails prompt purchases is not only estimated to be at least three times that of social media, the average order value is 17 percent higher."

But wait. The same study points out that there is a significant shift in consumer behavior, as well.

McKinsey & Company notes a 20 percent decline in e-mail use between 2008 and 2012, as e-mail surrendered ground to "social media networks, instant messaging and mobile-messaging." But the journey doesn't stop at clicking open an e-mail. Marketers who fail to realize that opening an e-mail is just the first step, are in serious trouble.

Clicking an e-mail that opens to a generic home page is not getting anyone anywhere. An optimized landing page is a necessity, and since 40 percent of all marketing e-mails are opened on a mobile device, Google's warnings hit home: 61 percent of users are "unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing." More painful, 40 percent will visit a competitor's site instead!

Obviously, as the report's authors point out, while e-mail use may be declining, the volume of e-mail continues to rise: 838 billion in the U.S. in 2013. Targeting the e-mail message to the right person has become a mantra. So has the injunction to make an e-mail feel personal.

It's a lot of work, but the the research sighted Williams-Sonoma which reported a 10% improvement in response rates by personalizing their e-mails, based on the customer's on-site and catalog shopping preferences.

To borrow a quote and illustration from LeadFormix: E-mail is dying, but long live e-mail.