To paraphrase Mark Twain, “The rumor of [e-mail marketing's] death has been greatly exaggerated.” E-mail marketing is NOT dead.

Consider your toolbox. You know, the old fashioned handyman tools that you keep around in case a picture needs to be hung or the sink clogs or a drawer knob gets loose. The hammer, the screwdriver, the wrench. Tools. Tools that work, right?

Then, let’s assume that you somehow acquire a fancy new cordless drill. The drill is useful, and it produces tremendous results. But sometimes…don’t you find yourself just needing a good old fashioned flat-head screw driver?

So, sure, there are some fancy new tools that are useful and produce amazing results. Tools like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, ratings and review sites of all sorts. But sometimes, don’t you just need to communicate with your customers? Don’t you want to just know what they think or let them know what’s up with you? It’s like getting that weekly phone call from your sister in Boise… it’s that consistent, reliable tool that keeps you connected.

That’s e-mail for you. E-mail provides the following primary benefits for your restaurant, hotel, or downtown district – or for anyone else who wants to be a savvy business owner:

1. There is no gatekeeper with e-mail. Back in “the day” of traditional media and cold calls, the gatekeeper screened calls, sorted the mail, etc. In today’s world, all of this is true PLUS I know plenty of executives who don’t check their own Facebook 100% of the time. But most still check their e-mail in some form or fashion. This rang true to me last week when we were visiting with a hotel executive whose staff checks her personal Facebook a lot of the time – but she gets her e-mail directly.

2. E-mail is convenient.You can setup an e-mail campaign whenever you want – then set it to send at the time of your choosing. Once sent, your reader can choose to read the e-mail at his/her convenience, respond at his/her convenience, etc. Therefore, while e-mail is still deemed an “interruption” style of marketing because it is “pushed” into your Inbox – it is not nearly as disruptive as other traditional media because readers have opted into your list, may read at their convenience and always have the option to quit receiving your e-mails by opting OUT of your list.

3. E-mail has viral potential. Because having readers is a privilege, you should always respect their time and work very hard to create content that is in every way appealing, informative, captivating and motivating for your readers. But more than that, e-mail has one potential that direct mail never had. I never got a direct mail postcard from the mailbox with such glee and excitement that I ran to the quick copy shop, made 30 copies and mailed them to my best girlfriends. It just doesn’t happen. But e-mail is often shared via the forwarding button.

4. E-mail is measureable. Measurement is at its best in the e-mail marketing world. You can learn a LOT about your readers through the tools available in a good e-mail marketing system. Open rates, click rates, what clicks were most popular, open times, dates, who, what, when, where, why, how… The details are all there to be applied to your marketing goals for future improvement. I love that e-mail marketing allows us to market well now – and teaches us how to market better in the future.

5. E-mail can be targeted and/or triggered. Basically, because I clicked on the ad for the red ballet flats in last night’s Boden USA e-mail campaign, I gave them the right to e-mail me about ballet flats for the next couple of weeks – or until inventory runs dry.  Because I clicked on the link to the Art Opening next Tuesday, I gave them permission to remind me via e-mail until the event is past. That’s a TRIGGER. I was moved into a subset of customers who cared about ballet flats and an art opening which triggered ongoing communication to me about those things while the current offers were relevant. And in the future, because I showed a past interest, I should be the TARGET of special promotional messages about similar offers and events…

6. E-mail is very affordable. Compared to the time and expense of direct mail, traditional media – and the total lack of measureable return on investment, the penny per e-mail cost of e-mail marketing is a phenomenal marketing wonder.

7. With e-mail, the sender has control. I am a total advocate of the social web, and I really do believe that if you are one of those people with control issues that is still in denial about social media…you need to GET OVER IT. You lost control a long time ago. The only thing left for you to do is to DEAL WITH REALITY. Period. However, sometimes, its fun to have a little control for just a little while. C’mon, you know you want to. E-mail is the perfect solution for the recovering control freak in all of us. E-mail marketing plays well with the other New Media like web sites and with the social web, but you can control the message, the subject line, the graphics, the time/date of the send, and how your respond, segment, trigger and target. You can do a LOT or do a little with your e-mail marketing: it’s your campaign. Control it.

Aside from those primary benefits, I believe that e-mail provides a secondary opportunity not available anywhere else.

E-mail allows you to TEST all sorts of ideas to an already loyal and willing customer and/or prospect group. A good e-mail marketing program will allow you to perform “split testing” on e-mail campaigns. A split test allows you to send any combination of headline and content (multiple headlines and/or multiple types of content or content layouts) to your customers. For instance, the program we use allows me to conduct SET (you choose who gets which message) or RANDOM (the program randomly sends the messages) split testing. This matters because if I test three different subject lines for the same basic information/e-mail content, I can test which SUBJECT LINE got the greatest OPEN RATE (that is, rate at which e-mail recipients actually opened the e-mail). Then, I can use that favored subject line as a headline on store signage, traditional media, social media postings, etc. and expect a similar response. You can do the same for content and layouts to learn what types of e-mail layouts or what type of content is most interesting to your customers. Basically, you are surveying your customers and they don’t even know it!

Why do YOU use e-mail marketing? What success stories do you have to tell?

Photo Credit: Djenen