This week, my favorite site eMarketer seems to be doing nothing but delivering holiday gifts. The most recent one below says in a simple chart what we all know to be the truth about e-mail marketing: Relevance is king.
If you mail a message with content that's relevant to your recipient, they will open and read it, and some percentage will take action. But if you mail an irrelevant or boring message, you're doing damage to your e-mail list by wearing it out.
E-mail marketing turns out to be mostly a creative editorial endeavor. In the end, it's not about the date you send it, or the time of day, or how many images you include, or the font size. It's simply about what you say and to whom.
That's why my mantra for 2010 is going to be audience segmentation. If you "blast" out the same message to everyone and assume it will be relevant to all, your message is probably too generic.
(I'll repeat a comment I made in a blog post a few weeks ago. The Obama campaign e-mail list had over 300 segments based on all sort of things like state, city, and job titles.)
The chart tells the story better than words.
300 segments!? Wow. That's actually *very* enlightening! That helps me think of some new ideas. Thanks Gene.
Now, to figure out how small arts organizations manage numerous multiple segments/messages with limited resources... I'd kill for only 25 segments!
Posted by: Joseph | December 07, 2009 at 11:24 PM