Aug
2005
Picked this up via Emergence Marketing: email newsletters no longer work
According to MarketingSherpa, the opening rate of email newsletters has plummeted by 10 points in the last year. The main reasons seem to be a combination of spam filters and reader boredom. The fix? Switch to irregular email broadcasts.
Here’s the article summary:
Red alert for business marketers sending email newsletters to house lists — according to MarketingSherpa’s new IT Marketing Benchmark Guide, your average open rates dropped 10 points in the past year.
(Actually that’s not a drop; it’s more like a plummet.)
We suspect increased filters may be one reason, but the biggest factor of all may be boredom. Your marketplace has been getting same-old, same-old newsletters from you (and/or your competitors) for a couple of years now.
Newsletters used to be exciting. Now they are routine delete-button-fodder. So, how can you put the oomph back into your house list email program? [Check out this Case Study for ideas->http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3058] (only free for about 10 days).
Personally I rarely read the vast majority of the marketing email and newsletters I get. At some point I just decided it took up a lot of time for little reward. Most of it is either sales pitches or long articles which may be good, but don’t give me the information in the quick bites I want.
There’s been a lot of hype about RSS and the death of email, but I must admit, right now I probably use feeds more than email to keep myself updated. It simply seems quicker and easier to zero-in on what I want, when I want, and dig deeper should I wish. However, having been online for years, I suspect my experience may be very different from that of newer, less jaded internet users.
