It’s been a while, since I heard about the famous article in the Wall Street Journal. You know, the “Why Email No Longer Rules…” article that caused a bit of a stir among email marketers (and probably generated huge traffic for the WSJ, controversy is one of the best traffic builders for online publishers, eyeballs and CPM revenues guaranteed).
Today, just like any other Saturday, I spent some time surfing the Web and discovered a blog I didn’t know before. It’s called Marketing Trenches and has quite some nice posts (and it’s frequently updated, which is still rather rare for company blogs).
The company behind the blog is US-based marketing consulting firm Right Source Marketing, and I decided to follow them.
What I wanted to share, however, was a post by Will Davis, the guy in command at Right Source.
Email marketing still has the highest ROI
And that post starts with the famous Wall Street Journal article (sorry for the long introduction).
Will writes that it’s been 3 months since that article. That’s not a cause for celebration or anything but Will has some arguments to defend why email deserves strong consideration as a part of our marketing strategy.
And it’s more than the fact that, according to the Direct Marketing Association’s Power of Direct Report, email marketing still has the highest ROI with $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, as Will writes.
The integration of email marketing and social media
Will refers to the integration of email marketing and social network sharing tools but also says that “from an integrated marketing perspective, your email subscriber base and ROI from that base are likely to grow when you are using marketing channels like search, social media and other online and offline marketing in a more holistic, integrated way, reaching your prospects and customers in multiple places and increasing your overall marketing ROI”.
Now, if you have been following my posts a bit, you can probably guess that I like what Will writes.
I think terms such as ‘holistic’, ‘integration of social media and email marketing’, ‘integrated’ and ‘ROI’ are all over the place here.
So, read Will’s post and, if you want to, check out some of the things I have been posting on the matter via the links below (including my somewhat angry message to “social media marketing experts”, claiming that the ROI of social media marketing cannot be calculated).
Here are some related links:
– The ROI of social media marketing : of course you can measure it!
– Social media and email integration: the facts and data
– Social email marketing mainstream & user-generated content showing up in emails
– Email marketing, social media marketing and the importance of relationships
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Thank you for providing your thoughts on my most recent Marketing Trenches post, it’s great to find others that think like we do!