Anyone who thinks email marketing is dead is someone who either lacks the resources or is unwilling to do the necessary work to build a healthy list. Maybe they don't have the material that is relevant to avoid having their audience unsubscribe? Or, they have a false belief that you may only send one email every so often out of respect for your subscriber.
Thinking email marketing is dead causes most of us to miss a genuinely fantastic marketing strategy. If a person is willing to subscribe to your list, they are asking you to give them information. They want to read what you have, provided you give them new and fresh content that is usable.
Sending the same message over and over never worked, and never will. Original usable content is necessary.
Sure, not every message contains valuable content to every reader as we all have different needs. Having content that demonstrates value, even if it is not to me will keep me reading your messages because I know the next email message could have useable information.
Multiple companies and people send me messages daily. Some of them sending numerous email messages every day. Sometimes I would like to unsubscribe as they come at a time when I am not in the mood, but I don't. The reason I don't is that I know that several of these messages will have relevant content that I can use. Unsubscribe is not an option that I am willing to do, so I delete the email messages of no value.
Is email marketing dead? The answer is either yes or no based on your actions. Are you willing to spend the time delivering quality content, or are you creating content with no direction or meaning? Your message has to be valuable to someone, and people who don't find a value for them need to see that it offers value for someone else to keep them subscribed.
Let's face it, if email marketing is dead, companies like Amazon, MOZ and Microsoft would never send you messages. You don't see them stopping anytime soon, do you?
email marketing is dead without changing your thinking
If you are having problems with your email marketing, you need to look at how you are running your program to change your results. That means changing your thinking on things like how often you send messages. You have to stay in front of your readers to condition them to take action through your email messages and develop an interest in your offering.
For example, when I sold cars on eBay I would find that I had my best week of sales after consistently marketing vehicles for five weeks on eBay. If I took a week off, the fifth week past the week, I took turned into an inherently bad week.
The reason is that the sales cycle proved to be about five weeks for people looking to buy a car through eBay. You have to establish a pattern in your email marketing campaign and then stick to that model to run a successful email marketing campaign, and that likely means sending email more often than what the so-called “experts” recommend. If you have content, cycle it every single day.
People who can't use your content will unsubscribe. Don't be afraid of losing this person. They are not an asset to your business anyway. I will dive into why this is important in a future post, and email message for my subscribers.
So my answer is, email marketing is not dead for me, but maybe it is for you.