• by David Baker , Op-Ed Contributor, November 21, 2011

In early 2011, eConsultancy reported that 72% of marketers believe the return on investment in email marketing outweighs any other direct marketing channel -- and 63% wanted to increase spending in email marketing. 

Has this happened? Year-to-date, at my company we are seeing a 38% to 45% increase in the volume of email being sent across our client base.   This trend follows the third successive year of 35% increase during the months of October, November and December holiday season. 

Years ago, Neiman Marcus, a prolific retail emailer, began tripling its email volume.  Most of the purest in the email space were shocked at this approach: more doesn’t mean smarter, right?  Honestly, from a consumer perspective, who wants an email every day from Neiman Marcus?  Well, it turns out millions did, and Neiman’s benefited from increased performance across the board.

Years later, we are seeing growth in virtually all vertical markets. Here are a few markets I think are driving these increases.

Retail:    Retail is enjoying the benefits of apps, social and better-thought-out mobile strategies to engage consumers more frequently in more ways. Some thought email would die when these channel competitors matured.  Yet, as we’ve said for years, connecting experiences and leveraging multiple channels is the key to a persistent promotional strategy. Email is a notification and promotion mainstay for retail -- primarily due to its cost factor to publish, but mostly due to the rise of the mobile inbox. 

Instead of surfing their laptops, consumers’ hub is now the mobile device; those long lines, red lights, and elevator rides have now turned into email /retail triage. 

There’s never a down-time for email for the retail sector.  The next stage is real-time content served at the moment of view.  When that hits scale, synched with the site and app experience, retail will hit another level of maturity in a connected marketing world. 

Financial Services:  On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, five golden rings.  This is important, since it’s the only day of Christmas in that fable that has anything product/retail-related  (hens, pipers, maids, lords-a leaping are all about food and experience, not big purchases).  

While credit is a challenge for some, you wouldn’t know it by the amount of email most of us get from credit issuers.  The volume is scary.  This has its good and bad points.  The good is, as a consumer, there is more opportunity now to get more credit and deals on banking services than in the past few years.  The bad from a consumer experience is ,  you’ll get A LOT of mail about promotional offers, some well-thought-out, other not-so-much.    A $1,000 credit line doesn’t mean much to a high net income segment.  Expect lots of promotional offers, higher volume of mail from banks, insurance companies and “investment” outlets.

Media/Publishing/Entertainment:  This is a broad vertical that follow the same patterns.   The sheer volume of email coming from publishers and media organizations is at its all-time high.  Consumer attention span is low, but velocity of engagement is high.  This is driven partly due to the mobile inbox and ability to consume richer experiences  anywhere (shopping and search oriented) in shorter busts. 

That doesn’t change the monetization angle in the least.   While we’re seeing dramatic shift in advertising spend migrating its way to digital, the need to engage, segment and maintain high value viewers/segments is even more vital to those monetizing experiences for advertising sake and driving more relevant targeting segments. 

The key to this is responsible, yet prolific email marketing.  They need to know who you are, they need to maintain some response pattern and they need this persistently to drive higher performance advertising sales.   All this translates into lots of email, from many sources (first and third party).

While retail and financial services are all about the conversion.  media/publishing/entertainment is about reach and engagement. 

With all, you’ll expect a 30-40% increase of email in your inbox this holiday.  For marketers, this means more competition for attention.    If you aren’t connecting experiences (the site, the app, social, email) you’ll be hard pressed to sustain this type of growth with the performance regularity you expect without a pretty significant shift in operational scale.

Last message before Cyber Monday (Nov. 28, the highest-volume email day of the year): Dig in. Optimization amidst this increased volume will be easier and harder.  Easier, since you may have statistically larger audiences to -- but focus on the right engagement metrics and what they mean. The right velocity in the wrong direction, only gets you more work.