With social networking and other Web 2.O tools being the flavor of the day, email marketing seems almost quaint and archaic by comparison. Is email marketing becoming a dinosaur?
Not at all. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of email's demise are greatly exaggerated (usually by people trying to sell you some other online marketing tool). Case in point: an April 2008 survey by Ipsos, which found that:
- Nearly three-quarters of adult Internet users in North America use email every day
- Two-thirds said they preferred e-mail for communicating with businesses -- and expect to still prefer e-mail five years from now.
In fact, email beat all other channels as the preferred form of communication with businesses by a wide margin, including websites, postal mail, voice and fax.
Here's the chart from eMarketer.com (click the screenshot below to view a larger image):
Importantly, these findings don't mean law firms should run and ramp up their volume of email alerts. To the contrary, a steady flow of untargeted emails is anathema to individuals with 88% of respondents indicating that they want tailored email messages matching their interests.
So segmenting your client lists and targeting your email communications to match topics with client interests is more critical than ever for law firms.
Comments