Could email marketing go the way of banners?

Email bombardment has sunk email open rates way under 2%. Will this indiscriminate shelling drive email response as low as banners?

In the early days of Internet advertising, banners had significant response rates, or have you forgotten the heady days of 5% click-throughs? Now you're lucky if your click-through rate is .5%.

But rocket-high rates can still be achieved if you target your audience. I've developed email with open rates of 70-80%, and conversion rates of 5%.

A "need to read" basis
Know your customers, and develop a relationship with relevant, persuasive email based on your business goals (after all, you can acquire all the customers in the world, but if they are not making you money, what good are they?)

Where to start? Customer knowledge is key. Get a read with focus groups and surveys to back them up. Get someone objective to coordinate.

Develop communications around benefits and relevancy. Original content is the key. Companies that rely on recycled or fluffy content find their email efforts go under. The big shock is that original content is not that expensive to create, if you have a great editor operating on sound marketing principles

The good news is, email can be profitable if you follow these guidelines and create content your customers need to read.

Mark Alexander Posth specializes in creating exceptional content strategies. Email Mark at mark@mposth.com.