Q: Why do you think Email has been given a back seat recently as a marketing vehicle...is it because of social media marketing being so prominent?
RH:My take on it is that email, the proper use of it, will be here to stay as long as the internet is here and so that’ll be like, forever. Social media marketing has its merits, though all in good measure.
It seems like whenever the next new shiniest marketing tool comes online, there’s this buffalo stampede that can be heard for miles, with everyone who has been sold into the idea and concept, touting it like it’s their online saviour.
Which of course is just plain old hype and I suppose a business owner has to go through the experience to see that social media marketing isn’t as it’s cracked up and promoted to be.
Yes, there are wonderful uses for it all but tell me a business that’s built its business solely on social media marketing and then you’ll have me as being an eager listener.
And the dirty little secret is that the big guns, you know, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Ebay… they’re using offline direct mail to grow their businesses.
Gasp. Who’d have thought that, right?
I mean, shouldn’t they be using just social media marketing as they’re purely online businesses? Now you know. Okay, now, social media marketing used in conjunction with email, can be a powerful combination.
But give me an either/or choice and I’ll pick email as a method of building a deep strong relationship with customers, as well as making regular sales like clockwork, I’ll take email, any day of the week, month or year.
Now those who spurn email and its inherent uses and power, simply do not know how to use it effectively.
And so what happens as a consequence?
They bad mouth the media, based on their erroneous assumptions, based on false information, based on simply not taking the time and investing energy and flop sweat to doing it right.
And let’s just take a look at this; email is just another format to communicate.
Nothing more. It’s not the holy-grail. Neither is facebook or twitter or any other social media marketing platform. They’re all communication vehicles, just like the fax, the mobile phone, tv, video, letters in the post.
And with all of those media platform or tools or vehicles, whatever I’ve just mentioned, if you don’t know how to effectively communicate using whatever media, you’re not doing as well as you thought.
And you can’t blame the media platform because if someone else is being successful at using it then it’s you, me, whoever is the mind behind the use of the communication tool in question; we’re the problem and not the media platform!
If someone else is successful at it, and we’re not; we’ve screwed it up along the line, somewhere.
