In an interview with eMarketer, Ed Kats, president of MediaWhiz, said that email and social media marketing campaigns are likely to remain strong contributors to integrated marketing strategies on the web. Many have suggested that email will become less successful moving forward, because young people interact with the channel less than social. However, Kats suggested that many have been predicting the demise of email for years, but it’s performance has remained strong.
In fact, Kats, and other marketers, said that using both email and social marketing can help make each channel more successful. For most, email and social represent two parts of the same conversion funnel. Social media allows prospects, whether for B2B or B2C companies, to discuss new products or services or share content they find relevant. Meanwhile, email marketing subscribers are often more likely to convert quickly.
However, each channel’s increasing value is indicative of the evolving consumer, and Kats believes there will always be room for both within a company’s web marketing efforts. Keeping them, or any other effort, separate, though, is where a lot of organizations find problems.
“I’ve been hearing email pronounced dead every year for the last 20 years, but every year its performance stays strong,” Kats told eMarketer. “Email will continue to thrive so long as marketers strive for integration with other channels and a better understanding of the data points. They can effectively message the consumer with the things they care about in the manner and time they expect to be messaged.”
Kats’ comment speaks to the growing need to ensure email marketing efforts contain content relevant to a target audience. Too often, companies fail to create different campaigns for varying segments of their subscriber lists. The issue has permeated most parts of web marketing as well. Organizations that have different demographics frequently buying from them or different levels of prospects at other businesses need to position their marketing content well to reach each audience.
Brafton recently spoke with Ken Barhoover, marketing manager at Park Place Technologies, who discussed the value of creating marketing material that reaches the different types of people his company encounters. Whether it’s an email strategy or a blog marketing campaign, attracting prospects with content is critical to the ultimate success of any strategy.
