Email marketing - done well, it's excellent

There's a popular misconception that email marketing is, somehow, less effective than printed paper coming through a letterbox.

It depends on how you measure success, and what the marketing campaign is, whether email is the ideal route or whether advertising or paper inserts, letters or flyers will be more effective. Email marketing is essential for any business which trades directly over the web; it gets to consumers when they are at their computer or smartphone and most likely to click through to the content you want them to see.
The picture's not quite as clear for campaigns in other businesses but email campaigns can still be devastatingly effective. One of my internal campaigns a few days ago achieved a 60% 'opened' rate and more than 10% click-through. It was a very simple campaign - notification of a change of address - and that's probably an indicator of why it worked.
If you have a single, simple message and need a general broadcast to your entire database, email keeps costs down and gets great results. Its effectiveness will, though, depend on the precise wording of the email (to avoid spam filters) and the email itself having an appealing format. Just building a list in the 'Bcc...' box of Outlook and penning a bit of text is almost a waste of time; not only will spam filters catch it easily, but it will look amateurish.
The advantage of using mass-email software is not only that it has ways of dodging spam filters, but that it gives you a comprehensive report on who opened the email, when, and whether they went on to your web page. It even identifies why email was not opened, or bounced back.
If your campaign is targeted at a group of buyers from your database, take a long look at a postal campaign; the numbers need to add up, but for the right product or service, the mail is still highly effective.

A word or two about the Data Protection Act

 I hear time and again (and from organisations which should know better) that the Data Protection Act is a major hurdle to email marketing. I'm even told that, for a business to use someone's email address, the customer has to have actually asked to be on the list. The DPA states that it's OK to market through email if:

• you've obtained a person's details in the course of a sale or negotiations for a sale of a product or service;
• the messages are only marketing similar products or services; and
• the person is given a simple opportunity to refuse marketing when their details are collected, and if they don't opt out at this point, are given a simple way to do so in future messages

These rules don't apply AT ALL to marketing B2B - only to personal email addresses.