I am a huge fan of email marketing and really believe in its strength and ability to deliver a dynamic offer in a quick and to-the-point manner. So I wanted to add a personal case study to show how great a medium email marketing is for companies to produce sales in an immediate nature.

As we hopefully all remembered, this past Sunday was Mother’s Day. It’s a day to say “thank you” not only to the women who put up with our crap and issues for the better part of our initial lives, but also (in my case) to the woman I hope to drop my kids off with for hours at a time so I can play golf or have some alone time with the wife. It’s also a day for me to celebrate my wife, the amazing mother of my two children, so she knows how much I appreciate her (all the time).

But on Wednesday of last week it occurred to me that I had yet to think about buying a single gift for anyone. My mind raced while I was at work—what should I get, when should I get it, where should I get it—and I could feel myself drawing nothing but blanks.

Then suddenly the skies opened and the sun shined down on me as I opened up one of my consumer email accounts. I had at least seven emails waiting for me from companies I had purchased from in the past, all with amazing Mother’s Day offers and ideas for the clueless like myself! This was relevant email times 10! Not only relevant with the offer, but relevant with the timing of that offer—combine those two things together and you truly capitalize on the value of email marketing.

So I opened every single email, clicked on every link I could find, and let the companies walk me through what they were offering. It was like having seven different personal shoppers at my disposal. All the advertisers did a great job of making the Mother’s Day offers front and center to the landing page they took me to. Free two-day shipping was referenced numerous times in numerous places, clearly showing the value and benefit they planned to offer me for making a purchase. Because they took me to a specific page with Mother’s Day offers and specials they did the one thing I think any consumer appreciates—they made the buying experience and searching experience easy.

The moral of this short story is that many of the fundamentals we all read about as it relates to email marketing—relevance, timing, value, clarity, offer—were all spoken to in the messages I received. It really gave me the motivation to take the call to action. So companies are getting it. They’re getting what they need to do and how to use those things to their benefit. This then will grow their sales and continually enable them to build their brand online. I ended up buying four things from two different companies, and the reality is that if I hadn’t received those emails, I wouldn’t have purchased anything from any of them.

Kudos to them!

—Rob Fitzgerald

the voice of email

Welcome to the Email Experience Council's blog, a forum for the email marketing industry's leading voices. On these pages, you'll find the opinions and thought-leadership that's driving the next evolution of email.

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Elie Ashery is the president and CEO of Gold Lasso, and is responsible for the company’s vision and strategy execution. Before joining Gold Lasso, he co-founded Newsletters.com in 1997, selling it to The Tribune Cos. in 2000. He then worked for IncenSoft, focusing on email marketing while there. Read more.

Amy Bills is the senior manager of field marketing at lead optimization company Bulldog Solutions. She is responsible for lead generation and the go-to-market execution of Bulldog's new products and initiatives. Amy was previously the editorial team leader of Freescale Semiconductor’s internal creative agency and a senior editor at Hoover’s Online. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Spencer Kollas is the director of delivery services at StrongMail, helping maximize customers’ email deliverability rates. He was previously director of deliverability services for Premiere Global Services. Spencer is an active member in the Email Sender & Provider Coalition, Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group, the Anti-Phishing Work Group and, of course, the eec. Read more.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Erick Mott is the director of marketing and corporate communications for Habeas, the leader in email reputation management services. He has a rich background in marketing and communications strategy and execution for such companies as Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco Systems, Creator Connection, Sun Microsystems, Philips NV, Elm Products and CBS Television. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experiene Council's founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

Jeremy Swift is director of client relations for email service provider BlueHornet. He helped form BlueHornet’s founding team in 2000 and has been responsible for client services and marketing strategy since the company’s inception. Jeremy is known for his ability to articulate technical information in ways that clearly resonate with today’s online marketer.

DJ Waldow is an account manager at Bronto Software. He works with Bronto’s largest clients to help them achieve and surpass their marketing goals. An active member of the email marketing community, DJ posts regularly on the Email Marketer’s Club, publishes a bi-weekly email marketing best practices newsletter, and films BrontoFire.

Chad White is the Email Experience Council’s director of retail insights and editor-at-large. He founded and is the author of the Retail Email Blog, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.