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Despite Performance Facts, Email Still Undervalued

I spent the second week of February in Palm Desert at the eTail conference and participated in a panel discussion focused on advanced segmentation strategies. Unlike in previous years, the team at eTail set up channel-specific tracks that preceded the usual conference—email and search each had their own rooms, and sizeable crowds looking to learn more from experts in the space.

The search room was especially well attended, with nearly double the number of conference goers as the email room. Now I have done some SEM work in my day, and have the utmost respect for search professionals and the business value they provide. But, as the recent Datran 2008 Marketing & Media Survey illustrates, email often delivers stronger ROI than search. In fact, 55.3% of the survey respondents expected email to outperform all other channels on the basis of return on investment in 2008. Additionally, when asked “which advertising media buys perform strongly for your company,” 80% identified email as a strong performer, compared to 70% for paid search. For this reason, 82.4% of respondents said they will increase their use of email marketing in 2008.

Again, don’t get me wrong here—I am a big search advocate (especially when it’s well integrated with email and other channels), but why were so many more people at eTail interested in search than email?

The reason, I believe, is that most organizations are still missing the boat on resource allocation and shortchanging email. Though email is often more effective at delivering near-term ROI, search still gets a bigger share of budget. Many of the advanced segmentation strategies we discussed at eTail require relatively significant investments of time and resources, and while they deliver excellent returns, it seems as if many of the people I spoke with were facing major resource constraints that prevented them from taking their programs to the next level.

It is our responsibility as email professionals (and evangelists) to ensure that our organizations realize the tremendous value a sophisticated email program can deliver. We need to craft email marketing performance dashboards that are designed for executive consumption—they must be clear, succinct and engaging. We need to keep our managers up to date on developments in the space and the opportunities they present to our businesses. Share the results of the Datran 2008 survey with your senior management. Leverage stats from EmailStatCenter.com in your quest for more budget. And do not take “no” for an answer.

All that is easily said. But I am still feeling a little like Rodney Dangerfield. Will the facts alone earn email the respect (and budget) it so richly deserves? What do you think? What can we in the email world do to get the resources required to drive more sophisticated and profitable programs? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

Posted on February 28, 2008 10:02 AM | Permalink

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Comments (4)

Mark Brownlow:

Yep indeed. As well as the resource issue, I think paid search just comes across as easier to do. One might argue that good PPC search campaigns need just as much intelligent application as a good email campaign. But certainly at a basic level, email seems more "frightening" to the innocent marketer.

Posted by Mark Brownlow | February 28, 2008 12:02 PM

Posted on February 28, 2008 12:02

Simms Jenkins:

Great thoughts here...education is still so important as an industry. We all deal with too many people who expect email to be easy and cheap.

Posted by Simms Jenkins | February 28, 2008 2:56 PM

Posted on February 28, 2008 14:56

Loren McDonald:

Nice post, Nickster. I've written about the resource issue in a few articles in MarketingProfs and elsewhere - I refer to it as the "ROI/Resource Imbalance." As you point out - email continues to have a tremendous ROI - but often is not allocated the appropriate resources.

I think one of the contributing factors is that email is not adequately accounted for on either the cost or revenue side in most companies...but ask a CEO of a small-to-midsized company how much he/she is spending on Google AdWords every month - I guarantee you they know.

Posted by Loren McDonald | February 29, 2008 2:18 AM

Posted on February 29, 2008 02:18

Al Kriney:

No doubt this is a major problem felt by email marketers for all the reasons you, Nick, and my fellow comment posters make. I especially agree with Loren. In-house list email is far cheaper than the CPMs/CPCs being charged for other, more easily understood online marketing mediums. This serves to devalue email in the minds of the Marketing budget owners that don't know any better, i.e., MOST Marketing budget owners. Don't fret folks in 10 years all of this hand wringing will be over and email under-estimation will seem like an artifact.

Interesting article on pricing:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2007/12/24/071224ta_talk_surowiecki

Posted by Al Kriney | March 2, 2008 3:09 AM

Posted on March 2, 2008 03:09

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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:

Jordan Ayan is the chairman of Create-It!, a technology consulting organization, as well as the CEO of SubscriberMail, one of the leading email marketing companies. A two-time book author, a patent holder and a frequent speaker, Jordan has more than 20 years of experience in direct and database marketing. 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.

Marco Marini is the CEO of ClickMail Marketing (CMM) and an acknowledged expert in e-marketing with over a decade and half's-worth of experience in the field. Before taking over as CEO, he was CMM's VP of Marketing & Operations. Marini has also held key marketing positions with CyberSource, eHealthInsurance, DoveBid and IBM Canada.

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 communications director at email service provider Lyris. He has 20 years of experience from enterprise, SMB, agency and start-up marketing, communications and innovation roles at companies including Habeas, Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Philips Electronics and two of his own start-ups. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experience 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.

Kevin Senne is the Strategic Deliverability Director for Premiere Global Services. Kevin has been heavily involved in all facets of email marketing for more than a decade and he previously managed Email Operations for Travelocity.com. Kevin specializes in deliverability, strategy, and social media integratio and he focuses on helping marketers become permission-based one-to-one marketers. 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.

Kara Trivunovic currently serves as the senior director of strategic services for StrongMail Systems, where she is responsible for helping marketers optimize their email marketing programs for greater returns. Most recently Kara was founder and principal of The Email Advisor, a respected email marketing consultancy. Prior to launching The Email Advisor, Kara led strategic services for the email division of Premiere Global Services. Kara brings a unique perspective to the space having worked on the client, agency and provider side for 10 years.

Chris Wheeleris the director of deliverability at Bronto Software. He is leading the charge for ensuring both Bronto's customers and staff are well informed about email marketing practices and technology as well as being the face of Bronto deliverability externally. Previously, Chris created the internal deliverability program at Amazon.com alongside program managing the operations of the email team and was at an ESP leading a team of deliverability consultants. Besides being a frequent contributor on Deliverability.com, Chris is a part of many email industry forums, both business and technical. Read more.

Chad White is the research director at Smith-Harmon, an email marketing strategy and creative services agency. He is the founder 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.