EVENT

At the dawn of the digital age, email heralded a bold turn away from junk mail and battling the paper bulge of the overworked mailbox. But in today’s crowded engagement landscape, email has started to feel more like a cheap imitation of its scan-and-junk bulk snail mail predecessor. 

According to the technology research group, Radicati, 205 billion emails are sent each day. Not even social can compete with the power of email, according to a Forrester report that indicates that people are twice as likely to sign up to receive a brand’s emails as they are to interact on Facebook. But, as email open rates are increasing year over year according to Epsilon, rising from 31 percent to 34.1 percent, email CLICK rates are in decline, dropping from 3.5 percent to 3.1 percent in Q3 of 2016.

Nonetheless, email continues to deliver. According to the Direct Marketing Association, in 2016, email had a median ROI of 122 percent, nearly four times higher than other marketing tactics including social, direct mail and search. And, according to a recent CMO Council study, 52 percent of consumers surveyed say email is a critical part of the customer experience, second only to access to a corporate website.

The spray and pray messaging approach of old is no longer applicable to emails. Where personalization reigns, what are the new rules of email marketing engagement and how have CMOs adjusted strategies to optimize emails as part of a holistic customer experience?

Join the CMO Council as we assemble a panel of marketing leaders who have all evolved email strategy to advance the customer experience and pull this powerful point of connection out of the junk mail pit.