E-mail Marketing Good-To-Knows from McKinsey

I was surprised to learn in class that email marketing is relatively effective, particularly given my own inclinations to delete almost all emails that are subscription-based (yep, even the ones I enrolled myself into).

I found this article from McKinsey interesting and relevant given our class discussion.

A few interesting highlights from the article, in case you are too busy to read the article:

1) There has been a 20% decline in e-mail usage between 2008-2012 as a share of time spent on communications, with the freed time going towards social networking, instant messaging, and mobile-messaging apps. However, e-mail marketing still yields higher customer acquisition.

2) Sending an eye-catching, click-generating e-mail is only as important as where that click takes you. Customized landing pages are key and can increase conversion rates by more than 25%. .

3) E-mailing smartly is more important than e-mailing often.

4) Personalized e-mails go a long way. Williams-Sonoma reported 10x response rate improvement when it began sending personalized e-mails. Another example of a company that does this: "Flash-sale site Gilt Groupe sends more than 3,000 variations of its daily e-mail, for example, each tailored based on past user click-throughs, browsing history, and purchase history."