Email is Different

Yesterday I talked about digital marketing in general, and the fact that one business generally attributed digital marketing efforts to either the very best customers or new customers.

Email is different. For the same business I discussed yesterday, here's what I learned.

• 31% of email sales were attributed to the best 4% of the customer file.
• 61% of email sales were attributed to the top 16% of the customer file.
• 5% of email sales were attributed to new customers.

The 61/16 ratio cited above is not uncommon. You're using a virtually free marketing channel to speak to your best customers.

Here's a fun one for you ... I once analyzed the results of an email mail/holdout test. In the mailed portion of the test, customers were much more likely to have orders attributed to Search and Facebook and Display. The very act of enticing a customer to buy via email marketing caused customers to presumably comparison shop elsewhere, touching other channels (and racking up additional expense) before (maybe) purchasing. In other words, email marketing was not virtually free. Email marketing caused expenses to increase in other channels.

Isn't that fun!

Email, as you already know, is entirely different from every other form of marketing. Give it 3% of your mental bandwidth and miss out on File Power, profit, and the audience that it serves (i.e. your best customers).