Search is probably given far more attention than any other vehicle for monetizing your online marketing success. While it does play a big part, it is far from being the only big thing.
As stories about e-mail have been circulating concerning its inevitable demise, big time online marketers have begun scurrying to go through alternative marketing channels. I hope you're not one of them. The e-mail marketing strategy is far from over.
Here is one thing to keep in mind as you go about all of your online marketing research: there are many people out there that have a vested interest in getting you to grab something of theirs to make money. So be a little skeptical when you hear about the 'death' of something. If you want to know what I've been hearing from my colleagues, it is that they are thrilled that people are believing these things about e-mail marketing. They have ratcheted up their campaigns and even doing better than they have in the past.
E-mail is still among one of the fastest growing marketing channels alongside of search. Don't let anybody at this time talk you into abandoning it.
Now there has been a little noise that response rates for e-mails have been slightly diminishing. Here is one of the reasons for that: In a recent software conference, in an audience of over 200 business people, not one of them knew why there were images blocked by Yahoo (YHOO), AOL or Hotmail. Along with that they were at the stage of being taught what it meant to be whitelisted and blacklisted. In other words, they were basically still on page 1 of the process. And these were people representing big businesses.
The point is that they haven't even gotten into the marketing stage. They were still dealing with the mechanics of it. For those of us that have been in online marketing for years, this is extraordinary in how slow e-mail marketing has been embraced by traditional companies.
For you, again, don't believe that e-mail has went the way of the dinosaur. For many companies, they haven't even entered into the game yet.
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