Wall Street Journal for fueling the fire. Keynoter Eric Kirby’s bona fides are impeccable. A senior
vice president at leading CRM shop Merkle, he previously led DoubleClick’s email solutions group and co-founded two email companies acquired by Return Path.
On Oct. 12, email marketers
may have spilled their coffee when browsing the Wall Street Journal and coming upon an article leading off with: “Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is
over.â€
Among other things, the piece argues social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are in the driver’s seat. The sites help reach more people, more quickly. Forget five
emails to five people. Just post an update on Facebook.
An obituary for email marketing? Ludicrous, though evolution is necessary, Kirby says. He’ll make the case as he discusses
industry trends in 2010 and best practices to work with them.
Kirby’s firm Merkle annually publishes a “View From the Inbox†white paper. The 2010 version is coming, but
he’ll share some so far unpublished research. Kirby said in an interview last week SMS-loving younger people are using email as often as older ones. “It’s just they also
check a lot of other messaging platforms.â€
Email marketers have an opportunity to “play a much more active role in owning some of these emerging channels, and apply some of the
same techniques and thought processes that have been successful†for them, Kirby said.
Merkle’s white paper is derived from a survey conducted by Harris Interactive of U.S.
adults 18 and older. For 2010, the sample size increased 31% to 3,300.
A few findings Kirby shared, with more coming this morning.
-- 52% of people said a good email program
influences whether they do business with a company â€" up from 47% last year
-- 93% said they spend time regularly with permission-based email -- up from 91% last year and 88% in 2007
“The perception that email is wearing out its welcome is not what this data would seem to say,†Kirby said.
