You may feel embarrassingly “old school” touting the marketing virtues of e-mail – but you shouldn’t, says blogger Mitch Joel. “E-mail still matters,” he insists. “As much as Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook and Skype provide powerful (and great) new ways to communicate, e-mail is still a primary way to communicate and also get information,” says Joel. Though it may no longer be the most exciting topic in marketing, “there are still millions of people — specifically those in business, with education and money to spend — who rely on e-mail as their primary lifeline. And, for those who can make it personalized and relevant, e-mail marketing still delivers great ROI.”

One key factor in e-mail’s staying power as a marketing tool, he adds, is that it is — for the most part — private. “It’s fascinating to see many businesses or independent consultants using these public, online social networks for business,” he says. “Sure, they’re great to connect, but any interfacing between clients, private communications, company-specific content (like your intellectual property) is now a part of their system too. Not to be paranoid, or make you paranoid, but they do have the right to review that content and do with it what they will (like sell it to your competitors).”

Whether it’s for e-newsletters, Google Alerts, or quick notes from key business people or new business opportunities, “nothing beats e-mail,” says Joel. “Beyond the hundreds of RSS feeds and people that I am following on Twitter or keywords being tracked using TweetDeck, e-mail still inspires everything from articles to read and blogs to check out, to the latest news items to review and businesses opportunities to attack.”

Source: Twist Image

Posted November 10th, 2009 under Intellectual Property Marketing

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