With the advent of social media, there were whispers that email as a communication channel was on its way out... but that’s certainly not the case.
As mentioned in our Marketing Survival Guide for 2013, a recent survey by Pardot (a cloud marketing automation provider) stated that “although opinions were mixed amongst B2B marketers, 47% believed that email marketing would still be relevant in 5 years time”.
This 47% along with other savvy marketers are aware that email currently exists and will continue to do so as long we adapt the way we use it as a communication channel. Email can no longer compete as a standalone marketing tool - that much we all know. But, when it’s used as part of a fully-integrated marketing campaign it can still pack a punch.
The goal of email marketing in today’s modern world is to get the right email to the right person at the right time. And this is easily achieved, if you are willing to do the background work. By using persona documents (to create a ‘picture’ of your prospects), integrated Social Media and real-time data you can create content that is personalised, targeted and relevant to your particular reader.
It may not be a marketing powerhouse anymore, but email is still a very valuable asset. At Really B2B, we regularly find that as a lead generation tool, email is an excellent choice of communication channel - hence its inclusion in 98% of all our lead generation campaigns for our clients.
But if only there was some kind of industry data against which you could gauge and measure the results of your own email marketing activities...
There is. It’s called Really B2B’s Email Benchmark Report and it’s packed with numerical data such as Open Rates, Clickthrough Rates and Unsubscribe Rates for each industry to help you review your own email marketing and identify potential areas for improvement.