Today it was announced that, for the first time the average person receives more junk email (spam) than physical junk mail. Predictably, it brought out cries of outrage about wasted time, ineffectiveness and usual lamentations of the travails of modern living...
The chief of Ogilvy One DM operation was called upon to explain the phenomenon. As he was only given a couple of minutes to discuss the item it was obvious that nothing new was going to come out or be explored. However, what struck me was the very first question pitched to him: "how many emails are sent out to get one sale?" Actually he made rather a hash of his response but the interesting thing was that it took him to the end to mention segmentation and so on.
Listening to this I had a couple of thoughts. Firstly, that people who don't understand the sea-change that direct marketing using email brought about also don't understand how much more rich information can be gleaned from this channel. Things like open rates, click-through statistics etc just can't be replicated through postal DM. Secondly, isn't it interesting how the response rate was the first line of questioning? Would people query the number of meetings taken to close a sale?
In fact, the whole point of email DM seemed to be missed. After all the function of an email marketing message is to inform and invite interaction. Most email marketing is by explicit opt-in, and is therefore part of a condoned relationship. The channel, if properly used, is there to keep awareness of a product or service which otherwise may be missed in the blizzard of messages that we're all exposed to.
The best marketers know that there is a place for DM in the mix and also know that it needs to be accepted by their target audience, and segmented accordingly. They also know that other channels need to be deployed. Good email marketing is NOT spam and spam is not email marketing.
So there.