Is E-Mail Marketing Favored Just Because It's Easy?

Surveys and studies consistently rate e-mail as the most effective digital marketing method, far outpacing mobile, content marketing, social media, and paid search. But a new study by Marketing Charts adds an interesting spin, showing that marketers also rate e-mail as the least difficult form of digital marketing. The implication is that a lot of e-mail marketing may occur simply because marketers find it easy to do, and the larger volumes (generating more leads and sales) then fuels the belief that it is also a more successful digital channel. For example, e-mail was rated as the most effective marketing tool by 54% and as most difficult to implement by just 11% of digital marketers in the Marketing Charts study. In contrast, while social media was rated as most effective by 43%, a larger 49% also rated it as difficult to do. Similarly, content marketing was judged effective by 38%, but 42% also rated it as the most difficult method to master. And mobile/SMS marketing fell even lower on the success scale, with just 9% rating it as an effective marketing method and 34% categorizing it as difficult to execute. It is worrisome to think that perceived difficulty may be scaring marketers away from potentially successful marketing methods! As a Business2Community post by Graham Jones points out, independent analyses by firms such as HubSpot have shown that content marketing is the single most successful online method of generating sales -- yet marketers still place its effectiveness behind that of e-mail. As Jones warns, "Sometimes, a business benefits when you concentrate on the more difficult tasks, rather than the easy ones." For more data from the Marketing Charts study, go to http://www.business2community.com/email-marketing/email-marketing-successful-just-plain-easy-01022936

Is USPS Planning New Mail Technology Discounts?

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) may be considering more discounts for direct mailers who use emerging mail technologies -- at least that's the implication of a "Mail Innovations" report just released by the USPS Office of Inspector General (OIG). The report details and encourages use of 10 types of innovations, hinting that these may also come up for promotional discounting. Three tools listed under "Connected Mail," meaning mail that incorporates digital via Internet-enabled devices, already get discounts from the USPS: QR Codes, Augmented Reality (AR) and Near-Field Communication (NFC). The OIG report adds Webkeys, which can be plugged into USBs to launch web pages, to the Connected Mail category for potential promotion. The OIG report also discusses three technologies in an "Electronic Mail" category, meaning direct mail with an embedded electronic component: video in print, which creates a screen on paper that can play up to five videos; mobile in print with call or text buttons connecting directly to the marketer; and conductive ink mail that can link to an electricity source such as a battery or processing chip to do things like light a bulb or create a noise. Finally, the OIG report looks at "Dimensional Mail" innovations, such as "interesting links" that allow consumers to interact with mail by making colors appear or disappear; customized MarketMail that uses shape, size and texture, often without an envelope; and 3D mail that folds or pops into a message, similar to a pop-up book. For more on the new USPS OIG report and emerging mail technologies, see the Target Marketing magazine post at http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/usps-new-direct-mail-discounts-innovators/1