Why Email Marketing Is Vital To A Brand's Health

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Not long ago I wrote an article entitled As If They Need It, Another Reason Brands Need To Be Mobile which essentially spelled out the fact that the most powerful brand ambassadors in the world, moms - are a very mobile demographic and if marketing & advertising folks want to succeed, they better be mobile as well. 

Literally.

In fact one of the things I used to make my point was this chart, courtesy of eMarketer which spells out what the activities moms most like to do via their smartphone. Pay attention to the first two. Then hold that thought.

Not long ago I received the results of a survey entitled Shopping with Social Media which was conducted by Ryan Partnership, a behavioral marketing agency. In the online survey of primary household shoppers, which yielded over 10,000 results, consumers were asked which digital tools they were aware of and which they used in the past year.

It is the third year they've conducted this study and according to Kim Finnerty, SVP Research & Insights at Ryan Partnership, this year they saw continued increasing penetration for newer, more mobile tools like Load to Card coupons, product reviews, and mobile payments.

No real surprise there as far as I am concerned given the mobile world we live in, of course.

In speaking with Kim, I asked her if should could break down the results to show just one particular demographic. A demographic which accounts for anywhere from 80-90% of all household decisions. A very powerful and influential demographic. Of course I am referring to moms.

The reason I asked for this breakdown is I wanted to see how moms fared compared to the national averages and lo and behold, it seems good old email, the medium many predicted years ago would go the way of fax machines, is not only popular among moms, it outranks other mediums in the eyes of this most sought after demographic.

Go back and look at the eMarketer chart above, then look at this:

Do you see it?

The question posed was "When have you used X to help you shop or plan to shop?"

Retail emails

• U.S. average - 13%
• Moms - 16%

Brand emails

• U.S. average - 17%
• Moms - 19%

Retailer texts

• U.S. average - 29%
• Moms - 31%

So, moms are mobile, we know that. They check email and texts on their smartphones but they are also checking email via other sources as the chart above is channel agnostic.

In other words email marketing is extremely vital in engaging with moms and potentially impacting their buying decision. The words "help you shop"  and "plan to shop" are the key phrases here kids. Anytime you use and hear the words "help" and "plan" that tells you that whatever topic you're discussing carries with it an inherent value either in the positive or negative.

Go back again and look at the chart above from Ryan Partnership see how email scores compared to social media and shopping apps. In each instance, moms come in under the national average.

Yet for email, the opposite is true.

Finnerty, in speaking about the results of the survey from an overall perspective says that the biggest surprise that came out of the findings was how high email ranked. "Email is still a very strong tool for changing shopper behavior and satisfying shopper needs," she said. "While it seems like an old-school tool compared to things like shopping apps and mobile payments, marketers have had years to perfect it so it achieves objectives."

She very well could have been speaking about the mom demographic only.

Source: Ryan Partnership, eMarketer, Forbes

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