eROI Days Email Agency

MarketingVox wrote about Forrester Research’s new forecast of the online marketing industry. The 3 things that made an impression on me in this forecast are:

1. I’m psyched to be part of an industry that is growing 27% a year for the next 5 years to go from $18.4 billion this year to $61.3 billion in 2012. If we can’t grow our company by at least 27% per year then we’re doing something wrong.

2. Search is strong. The big winners are search media giants Google and secondarily Yahoo, MSN, and a couple others. Email is growing, but at a slower pace.

3. Interactive agencies and media are disrupters. The report forecasts, “Interactive’s share of total ad spend is forecast to increase from 8 percent in 2007 to 18 percent in 2012.” Things move so quickly in the interactive world that we need to continually educate ourselves on the next Facebook, SpotRunner, MySpace, or disruptive community site or technology that may accelerate this trend.

This is a relevant study just released yesterday from Shop.org and Forrester on how super effective email marketing is for retaining customers and a top priority for many marketers. I’ve got to admit that some of these numbers are hard to believe as conventional wisdom is strongly rooted in Search being a far better customer acquisition tool than email (while email marketing has always been known to perform best in customer retention). Apparently, email is strong for both retention and acquisition.

Some key highlights:

• E-mail marketing to house files is delivering higher response rates and lower costs per order than other channels
• E-mail is delivering sales at an average cost per order of less than $7, according to two surveys conducted by Forrester Research on Shop.org’s behalf to create the State of Retailing Online 2007 report. This is compared to $71.89 for banner ads, $26.75 for paid search and $17.47 for affiliate programs.
• 91% percent of those surveyed said they use e-mail to a house list as a marketing tactic while 88% of them said it has increased as a priority in 2007
• Average click-through and order-conversion rates of e-mail are an astounding 11% and 6%
• Most popular and effective e-mails are those that tout online-only promotions, with 71% of those surveyed saying they use the tactic and 66% rating it as “very effective.”
• One of the lowest-rated types of e-mails were those following shopping cart abandonment, with 17% saying they use it and 13% rating it very effective.

More info and full article here:
http://directmag.com/disciplines/email/email_metrics_healthy/

My colleague Kent Lewis and I spoke at the Annual conference for the International Association of Business Communicators.

Our topic: Building brands and community via e-marketing

Date: Monday, 25 June
Time: 10:30 – 11:45 a.m.
Track: Marketing & Brand

If you’re trying to get your head around terms like search engine marketing, blogosphere, podcasting, RSS and social media, this is the session for you. This presentation will provide an overview of effective e-marketing strategies and tactics as well as case studies and helpful resources you can use to develop and implement your own e-marketing program.

In this session, you will learn:
The definition and proper applications of e-marketing
Effective e-marketing strategies and tactics
How do develop your own e-marketing program

There were roughly 1,100 people at the overall event and 250-ish at our session. There was a lot of great dialogue between us (the speakers) and the audience on the importance of the blogosphere and social networking. Search marketing and email marketing were known entities as must-haves in any marketing mix.

The debate around whether or not a blog is worth the effort reminded me of a worldwide Intel conference for employees 10 years ago when then Intel CEO Andy Grove said that every company would be a “web company” (meaning every company would have a website) within 5 years. Guess what – he was right. I think the same thing will happen with corporate blogs in the next 5 years. It is not a question of “if” – it’s a question of when your company will support the 1 hour per week required for maintaining a good blog.

Here is our presentation if you didn’t get a chance to see it at the event: (the file is a bit big, so I need to upload it to the server when I talk to my tech guys at the office – sorry about that).

I got an email from Media Post’s Search Insider, and I could not agree more with author Gord Hotchkiss:

“Hello, my name is Gord, and I’m addicted to the Internet. I didn’t realize I was addicted until I recently spent three weeks in Europe and had to go through withdrawal. But after hanging around hotel lobbies trying to get a hit from a local hot spot, I’ve had to face up to the fact that I can’t kick the habit. I need my broadband, baby!

Fear and Loathing in l’Italia

I didn’t go totally cold turkey. I had my PDA to keep up on e-mails, but it just didn’t give me the rush I was looking for. Here I was, surrounded by the culmination of centuries of artistic achievement, and all I could think about was where my Google hook-up was coming from.

I speak somewhat facetiously, but there’s a lot of truth here. Here’s an online definition of addiction:

Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance.
The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.
It seems to me that going online qualifies on both counts. There’s no doubt that being online is habit forming. But it goes further than that. I realized in the last 20-plus days that it’s hard-wired into my physiology. Not having instant access was as foreign as not having my right hand.”

Read Gord’s blog: http://www.outofmygord.com