Author Archives: Sara Chapman

I spent a few days in sunny San Diego for the Online Marketing Summit last week. Not only was NordicClick showing off our cool new booth, but I had the privilege to host 2 days of 1:1 email labs. One of the first questions I was asked at my table was “What do you think about everyone saying the email is dead?” My response was a simple question back to her. “How many email addresses do you have and how many times a day do you check it?” She just looked at me and smiled and said she got my point. I hope you do too.

I’ve been hearing the phrase “email is dead” for quite a few years now and it’s still far away from middle age. Email has been around since my freshman year in college (feel free to do the math), and like a fine wine, it hasn’t gotten stale, it’s gotten better with age. Email marketing is, in my opinion, one of the main catalysts to all things online marketing. Sure, part of its main purpose is to let us know that our online purchase is complete or in transit, but that same email also tells us about other products or services that we may not know about. The great thing about email is that we, as experts, are all getting smarter about it, at least I think we are. It’s unusual now to find an email service provider that doesn’t have killer tools to allow us to be laser focused on our target.

Sitting at my little lab table at OMS, I was surprised over and over again at how many people just aren’t participating in any email program. Or, if they are, it was a program that they set up over a year ago but hadn’t put any focus on it whatsoever. We all get so distracted by the new big shiny object (Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, etc…) that we sometimes forget about one of the easiest and most cost effective ways of reaching our customers. With very little effort you can scale and optimize most email programs. I’ll ask another question, how often do you check your Facebook email?

Each session brought forth different issues and various types of companies, but each ended similarly as I told them to “start simple” or “go back to the basics”, or “try a new way to acquire names and better data”. No matter what though, they all heard the same line from me – Email is not dead, and you better make sure to jump on the bandwagon. It’s a tried and true method of online marketing… and it ain’t going away.