What better way to celebrate Halloween than by discussing the scariest question I’ve ever heard in my years of working with technology and higher education… “Do you use email?”
(Insert screams of terror here)
I typically create marketing content on customer lifecycle marketing, marketing automation, lead scoring, email marketing, campaign management, big data, and the customer journey. I share statistics on B2B and B2C marketing tactics on a regular basis. There’s an assumption I make as a marketer that my audience is using tactics similar to me on a regular basis. Especially email. Email has become so commonplace. There used to be a time when people actually spoke on the phone and sent facsimiles. Remember those days? Now we’d prefer to communicate via email or SMS.
Imagine my surprise when I overheard someone say the other day that their company, “doesn’t really use email for marketing purposes.”
It’s true, not every marketer or organization uses email as a means for communicating with prospective customers. In Econsultancy’s Email Marketing Industry Census 2013, out of 804 respondents, 5% stated they were not utilizing a web-based email application, an in-house third party software, a mixture of the two, or a fully managed service. Email marketing isn’t for everyone. Similarly, not every company is active on social media or runs print, television or radio ads. Every marketing tactic plays a role in the overall marketing strategy of a brand. Marketers can use any combination to find what works and has the highest ROI.
However, it’s important to keep in mind the overwhelming majority of respondents to Econsultancy’s census do use email. And that’s not all they’re doing, either. According to the Content Marketing Institute, B2C marketers use 12 content marketing tactics on average and larger companies with 10,000+ employees average 16 tactics. B2B marketers use an average of 12 content marketing tactics and utilize approximately five different social media distribution channels.
I think it’s fair to say the majority of successful marketers are organized and agile multi-taskers! There’s an expectation from prospective and current customers to communicate with them on a regular basis, with content they are interested in, and shared in a format they prefer. That’s why lifecycle marketing plays such a crucial role in a this diversified and modern approach to marketing. Not only can lifecycle marketing automate email communications but it can execute multichannel campaigns, automating tactics from email marketing to SMS and direct mail to website activity.
I hope my headline doesn’t cause you nightmares tonight. Happy Halloween!
