Marketing Studies

MarketingSherpa.com reports:

"That $15.50 per email-marketing dollar spent is roughly 17% more than in direct-mail campaigns and 73% more than telemarketing campaigns, according to a new study from the Winterberry Group, a New York-based research and consulting group.

Winterberry also predicts that email sales will go up to $16.70 per dollar in the coming year, compared to $14.60 generated per DM dollar, and $9.71 in sales per telemarketing-campaign dollar.

While my faith in most research stats is less than firm, this study does make a definitive point: e-mail marketing still works and at least "in concept" provides a positive ROI.

Also, my own experience from the US and Central and Eastern European markets proves this point as well, as do the conversations I had with e-mail marketers while attending the International Direct Marketing Fair.

Yes, e-mail is still alive and it still works.

But, that does not change the fact that e-mail is difficult to deliver, and that in most cases it actually does not get delivered. Let's not forget that on the average, 64.7% of the business e-mail you send is not even opened, let alone read, according to DoubleClick.

As a content publisher, I certainly want all of my readers to receive my content. And the same goes for my customers: I want to be absolutely certain that they do receive the important content intended for them. With e-mail, I just can't be sure. RSS is the perfect tool to make this happen.

This brings us to a strange situation where e-mail still generates a great ROI, but RSS is the tool that "gets content delivered". The only sensible way out of this dillema is to use both, hand-in-hand.