E-mail’s enduring appeal
SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in Smartbrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues. Paul Chaney, Internet marketing director for Bizzuka and member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board, helps create the questions and analyzes the results. We run the poll question each Wednesday in our e-newsletter and feature Paul’s analysis on this blog.
Last week’s poll question: Which form of online marketing do you use most often?
- E-mail marketing, 40%
- Content marketing (articles, blog posts, etc.), 16%
- Social-media marketing, 15%
- Search-engine optimization, 10%
- Online advertising (banner ads), 8%
- Pay-per-click advertising (Google AdWords), 6%
- Don’t use online marketing, 5%
“As much as I now focus on social media marketing, e-mail holds a warm place in my heart as a marketing tool. More money is spent on e-mail marketing than any other form — because it works.
One result does concern me — the low percentage of those using search-engine optimization. Historically, SEO has been second only to e-mail as the most popular form of online marketing. I’m curious why our readers aren’t using it with greater frequency. One explanation might be the stronger prevalence of content marketing which, of course, offers SEO benefits.” –Paul Chaney
Posted by Twitter Trackbacks for SmartBlog On Social Media » E-mail’s enduring appeal [smartblogs.com] on Topsy.com on September 9th, 2009 at 6:47 am
[...] SmartBlog On Social Media » E-mail’s enduring appeal smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2009/09/09/e-mails-enduring-appeal – view page – cached SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in Smartbrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues. — From the page [...]
Posted by Alex Hawkinson on September 9th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Very interesting. We’re certainly finding with CloudProfile (which inherently drives range of content marketing, social media marketing, and SEO) that SEO is fading to the backdrop as a distinct activity. It is instead handled in the background by the same conversational tools that the business users are using to drive their social media engagement.
It strikes me that the above results should be of concern to Google as they certainly point to a flattening of pay-per-click advertising. The marketing mechanisms which work best are moving towards conversational engagement types which take fewer direct dollars but more labor.
Posted by Rob Johnson on September 10th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Great article, personally I think it is a huge mistake to place SEO on the back-burner. Social Influence Marketing is great for getting traffic, however what is the quality of that traffic?
Posted by John Ayers on September 30th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Internet OPEN for everyone? Do we need the FCC’s help?
Consider what community based wi-fi efforts are doing…
http://www.openmarvista.net/group/communitywireless