Yakiji (Yah-key-jee)

I attended a seminar last week on the Future of Email Marketing at The Depot in downtown Minneapolis. It was presented by Jeff Rohrs, the VP of Marketing at Exact Target. Overall, it was a great seminar and it raised some interesting points on where email marketing is heading in 2009.

Here were some of the significant take-aways (in a scattered format from my notes):

• The big value in Email Marketing is migrating to the “Social Inbox”. The social inbox is known as the inbox that we have through Facebox, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. These are the inboxes that we go to now expecting non-spammy messages from people (or companies) whom we have invited.
• Yahoo! is currently beta testing their own version of a social inbox which is getting a lot of buzz lately as being a big thing in 2009. This inbox will (somehow) be a collective inbox for all of our inboxes – voicemail, email, text messages, IMs, blogs, blog comments, RSS, etc. Essentially, it’s supposed to be a “one stop shop” for all of our incoming messages and media. One of the raving features is that will (supposedly) have a filtering feature that will adapt well with keeping spam and unnecessary messages out.
• MySpace (and Facebook) are developing an open email system which will allow users to acquire their own email address from MySpace (yourname@myspace.com). I’m not completely understanding the strategy behind this.
• Direct Mail costs are rising at a fast rate, which is pushing more demand for email marketing and social media in 2009.
• In 2009, we will see a massive shift towards (if we haven’t seen this already) permission based marketing. The social inbox is permissions based – “Invitations can easily be revoked at any time”. The power is back in the user’s hands.
• In a recent survey conducted asking people what they rated solicited emails they receive as acceptable:
  1 – Thank You/Confirmation Emails – this was rated the highest by a significant margin for what users find acceptable. People are most accepting of this type of email.
  2 – Financial Statements
  3 – Account Status Updates
  4 – Promotional Messages (solicited)
  5 – Polls/Surveys
  6 – Sweepstakes
  7 – Promotional Messages (unsolicited)
• The big opportunity in email resides in “email as a customer service” (ex: a thank you email after purchase)
• Twitter Search – currently delivers the most “up-to-date” search results (in relation to news or significant events). Several times faster than Google.
• In a survey, companys will be increasing funds in the following categories the most in 2009:
  1 – Social Media
  2 – Email Marketing – this was close behind social media
  3 – Paid Search – a distant 3rd
  4 – Telemarketing
• Since social media is so hot right now, email vendors (like Exact Target) are exploring ways to integrate social media tactics into email. Exact Target is currently working on utilizing “share this” functionality inside of emails and other social bookmarking options.

Hot Trend: Email list (or newsletter) signup forms are integrating the ability for users to adjust the frequency in which they want to receive emails (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly). Results have shown better long-run retention among subscribers.