We're in 'em - the dog days of summer, but they're not the only thing heating up.  Digital marketing is hot, especially with the state of the economy and the price of gas affecting delivery of traditional print anything - newspapers, direct mail, magazines and even postcards.  If it has to be transported in a fossil-fuel burning vehicle to reach your target audience, it's going to get more expensive.

Email holds firm as the most economical and universal channel for one-to-one dialogs, yet the online space in which these conversations happens grows immeasurably more crowded and diverse by the day.  Social media sites have taken off and new ones register on the horizon all the time, so how they will affect email is a question foremost on the minds of many marketers.

We'll explore that this month in the main feature below, but remember, social networks are just one prong of a solid integrated online marketing campaign that should include organic and paid search engine optimization, PR, and blogging too.

Email is both the springboard and linchpin for your integrated marketing campaigns - online and off - so make sure your email program isn't just treading water.  Once you have it at full sail, I invite you to cast a wide net, suit up, and jump in!

While you're at it have a sizzling summer,

Karen

The following is an excerpt from a recent interview with James Durbin of Brandstorming.  To read the full interview of Karen Talavera, please visit Situational Marketing. 

How will social media affect e-mail marketing campaigns in the future?  Is any of that happening now?

Social media is not affecting email marketing as much as it is affecting the use of email for personal (peer-to-peer) communication. In short, texting and IM through social networks is diminishing the use of email for personal communication in mostly just the youngest demographics, but is increasing the need for commercial email communication among all age groups. 

Two recent studies have found consumers prefer email as a communications channel – especially for marketing and advertising – over other online vehicles.  Habeas, Inc., a leading online reputation management services company, released its 2008 study of consumer attitudes towards email and online interaction with businesses in May 2008. The study, conducted by research firm Ipsos, found that 67% of consumers prefer email as a primary method of communications in their personal and business capacities.  The same study also found sixty-five percent of 18 to 34 year olds, the age demographic most comfortable with IM, SMS and emerging communications methods, will favor email to communicate with businesses in five years. 

Results of a second study, The 2008 Channel Preference Survey, were just released in early June 2008 by email services provider ExactTarget. According to this consumer survey, nearly two-thirds of US Internet users surveyed said email was their preferred channel for written communications between friends, with text messaging the next-favorite choice. The phone was the most popular way to communicate with friends overall, with 41% of respondents naming it as their channel of choice. Although there is a clear trend within younger age groups toward communication via social networks and text messaging, those preferred personal communication channels were not found to also be the preferred channels for marketing.  Asked to judge the acceptability of various channels for marketing purposes on a scale of 1 to 5, respondents gave direct mail an average score of 3.9, followed by e-mail at 3.7. All other channels averaged under 3. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said they had made a purchase because of a marketing message received through e-mail.

My view is that email has a large untapped potential for more direct, intimate and socially rich conversations – for what I call “dialog marketing”.  Traditionally, with email an offer is created based on what the company wants to sell, while social media marketing efforts focus more on involving communities or creating brand awareness and loyalty.  Email has several distinct advantages over social media, however, the greatest of which is nearly everyone (even measured from age three on) has an email address.  Email can be used to engage, ask and get valuable feedback on a one-to-one and importantly, private basis. Email is great for real conversations and can be much more powerful than social media in intricately involving someone in a consideration process. Popular social media destinations tend to be relatively superficial and ideal for interaction between fellow community members rather than consumers and marketers.

Two key characteristics of social media environments are user-generated content and word of mouse.  Viral content takes on a life of its own and gains lots of visibility and exposure. But you as a marketer tend to lose direct control of your marketing message in favor of a community-based, distributed and shared conversation. With direct marketing approaches like email, it is much easier to control the message, test marketing tactics and measure ROI. And marketing initiatives are directly tied to conversions. On the other hand, when you use social media as your key marketing communication vehicle, ROI is much more difficult to measure.

Last but absolutely not least, social media networks like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn are actually creating more email.  Whenever an action takes place which a network member may not be aware of because he is not logged-in at the time, email is used by the network owner to push notifications and alerts; to drive the user back to the community site.  So just as the growth of digital storage media (CD/DVD) created a greater demand for ink-on-paper printing, the growth and complexity of social networks is spawning more email.  It will be fascinating to watch how marketers evolve interactions and conversations begun on social networks into one-to-one email conversations in the next few years.