The Ad industry as a whole kinda gave up on e-mail marketing.  Just $400 million was spent on it in 2006. Marketers gave e-mail a good go initially, but had little more to work with than blasting in bulk. Their efforts resulted in SPAM and pissed consumers off.

What seems to work the best as of late is “opt-in”or “permission based marketing”.  But, the success of opt-in depends on a consumer that’s already aware of your product/service. Can e-mail marketing be used to reach virgin eyes?

Consumers pass along viral messages all the time, though rarely are they planned marketing messages. The majority of sharing is done on social networks anyway, so why even bother with e-mail marketing?

I’ll let my grandma answer to this question - she isn’t on Facebook nor does she spend time interacting with an application, but she does have an email address and she loves forwarding shit. I mean <3s it.

So, for now,  non-permission based e-mail marketing success hinges on developing  a message worth forwarding (either a notable value or really great creative).

Then again, we can’t track forwarded messages unless they’re forward through a button we’ve created. Shit, My grandma won’t even see that button!

Conclusion: A marketer’s BFF is a developer.

Read the article that obvi inspired me (more…)