A catch for some people will be that Borrell Associates, which is a research and consulting firm, expects most of the gains to occur on a large scale; think more “McDonald’s and Pizza Hut” than “mom and pop.”  Let’s move on to the stats, though.

Borrell Associates said in an official statement, “Email advertising will see moderately strong growth in 2011, up 9% to $16.0 billion for national and local.  Growth in this format is almost all from national advertisers; only 3% is local.”

Then the press release continued, “White paper marketing is a major contributor to its popularity – especially among B2B advertisers.”

So there’s perhaps a detail or two to help email advertising professionals get ahead of competitors.

Fortunately, if that nine percent estimate holds true, even landing on target will be a pretty good result after what the Dow and Nasdaq have been through over the past couple of years.

One thing I do depend on, though, is e-mail. It’s not so much e-mail itself but I actually use e-mail as a filter for the content that I have decided is really critical to me. You see, I am not an RSS guy. I tend to sign up for too many feeds that I get all giddy over, but then never read because my RSS reader tells me I have several hundred things to read right now. I’m just not wired that way.

What I respond to is something I have opted into that lands in my inbox. It’s kind of cool to get an e-mail from a group or publication that you have said “Yes, I would like to hear from you more often.” I have that relationship with BtoB Magazine and their other properties that centers on this very concept.

I look forward to getting the latest issue of BtoB Magazine. I go to www.btobonline.com, but it’s not the same. ( I find that with most magazines experiences with me which may be just due to my age.) BtoB Magazine is usually a quick read with good information presented in a clear manner. I like that. I also like the fact the one of the reasons I am so connected to the publication is the e-mail alerts available. They are very much like the magazine. They are crisp, clean, and direct, which usually allows me to get in, get out, and move on with some new information.

These between issues e-mails actually make the magazine better for me. Even if there is some overlap in content, I am forgiving because I am getting fed with the right stuff, at the right time (my time) and in the right amount. BtoB has done a nice job of making me a fan and I recommend their suite of offerings to anyone.

Creating content that your customers anticipate is what you should be aiming for all the time. Having several one-hit wonders may create spikes in traffic but they are inconsistent and hard to make plans for.

As with most things in life, people appreciate some consistency, whether it’s from friends, family or even business relationships. If you keep showing up and giving them something they need, they might actually miss you and wonder where you have been if you don’t keep the pace. It’s at that point that you know that you have created content anticipation and that anticipation will lead to engagement, which has a much greater chance of leading to success.

Does e-mail work for you? Is it a way for you to stay connected between content events? If not, what keeps your interest? What makes you anticipate content from somewhere? We’re all a bit different, so it would interesting to hear from some of our readers.

Comments

For the time being, brands and organizations continue to rely on email to connect and stay connected with various stakeholder communities. While message open rates and conversion ratios remain abysmal, email is nonetheless, effective en masse. Social networks represent something promising to any organization dependent on communications. Each network represents an “always on” series of engagement opportunities that are each inherently opt in whether they’re in the front or back channel.

- Wall posts
- Direct messages
- Invitations
- Gifts
- Public @ messages

Businesses are now attempting to migrate or extend their communities to social networks including Facebook and Twitter. The ability to do so offers organizations the ability to not only build communities in more modern, real-time and interactive domains, social networks offer a new way to connect personally and contextually. Engaging in social networks present two immediate benefits:

1. Connect value 1 to 1 to many individuals

2. Connect information 1 to many

Either way, meaningful and substantial information in these paradigms trigger the social effect, which expands reach and also the community overall through comments, shares, likes, retweets, and connections. This activity is visible by friends and friends of friends, and so on, and when combined with an appealing click to action, also enhanced performance and metrics in the process.

eROI recently released a new report, “The Current State of Social, Mobile, and Email Integration,” which found that 66% of marketers included links to social profiles in email campaigns. StrongMail released research in its study, “2010 Email Marketing Survey” that not only corroborated the data from eROI, it upped it to 71%.

StrongMail interviewed business executives in its most current study released in July 2010.  Second to the promotion of social presences in email campaigns, was the ability to provide social sharing functionality inside email. We’re already witnessing the migration as well as integrating the social effect into the inbox. eROI also found that this clickable functionality was secondary in terms of importance with 59.1% of all responses.

Of those social networks most actively promoted in email, eROI found that Facebook was the top promoted network with 91%. Twitter ranked second with just under 84%. LinkedIn and YouTube earned third and fourth spots with 48% and 34% respectively. Other studies found that most small to mid-sized businesses rarely promoted other social networks outside of Facebook and Twitter.

Social Databases

As engagement evolves from email 1.0 to social networks, expect to see experimentation with one-to-many communication through automated one-to-one and one-to-many mass messaging systems. This capability will evolve from messaging existing friends and followers to sophisticated frameworks that find and connect with individuals who have publicly shared information related to industries, products, services, and interests via keywords. These systems will seek an opt-in relationship through a reciprocal friend, follow or “like” in order to experiment with direct messages that offers promotions, rewards, or exclusive access or content for establishing and maintaining the link.  Initial experiments will resemble dedicated push streams such as @DellOutlet or Twitter’s @EarlyBird promotion channels where followers subscribe to accounts for clearly articulated benefits. Over time, marketers will seek to enhance responses and ensuing actions through varieties of messages aimed at  segmented users as indexed by expressed wants or defined preferences. Eventually, we will see personalized, contextualized and value-added engagement to induce positive word of mouth and consumer responses.

In the end, it’s what you introduce into your messages and streams that counts for everything. Regardless of the incumbent social messaging solutions that are available today or those soon to debut, what’s clear is that intention speaks volumes here. Any mass-marketing that mirrors email blasts of today will only create animosity and immediately alienate communities. In social media, you earn the relationships and inspire the desired outcomes that you deserve.

Remember…Relevance + Resonance = Significance (RRS)

Comments

The research also found transactions and revenue response times can significantly vary by mailing type and subject line. Using time-limited offers in subject lines shows the quickest response time of all, with 59 percent of transactions in day one, while coupons demonstrate much slower response, with only 36 percent of transactions the first day.

Welcome email recipients appear to require more time to make purchases, with only 33 percent of transactions occurring the first day.

“Being able to anticipate customer response time can help businesses optimize everything from forecasting and budget planning to timing the launch of cross-channel promotions and sales,” said Rachel Bergman, general manager and SVP, Experian CheetahMail.

“This type of insight is invaluable to progressive marketers looking to strengthen their campaign strategies for increased ROI and deeper customer engagement.”

The most important tool for effective e-marketing is the autoresponder.

What, you might ask, is an autoresponder?

Good question.

Basically, an autoresponder is an automatable, Internet-based email service.

Autoresponders provide you with an inexpensive system for collecting names and emails, sending out email broadcasts to your list, and setting up preset email sequences. And because they distribute your emails through their service, you don’t have to worry about getting your site blacklisted for spamming.

The best part about autoresponders systems is they allow you to automate and implement a whole bunch of highly-effective, low-cost marketing strategies.

You can purchase a basic autoresponder subscription for around $20 a month. Most shopping carts also come with autoresponders. So if you are already doing ecommerce, don’t purchase a stand alone autoresponder without checking to see if you already have access to one.

*****
Nine reasons to have an autoresponder

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1) When it comes to creating a successful business (Internet or otherwise), the money is in the list. Because the people on your contact list already know you and what you offer. So they are much more likely to buy from you in the future. Autoresponders give you a sign-up form to add to your site so you can collect contact information and create your own list.

2) Autoresponders make sure you are compliant with anti-spam laws and regulation. They automatically include all the required information, provide you with a double-opt-in system, and add a link to unsubscribe in every email.

3) Once someone is on your list, you can stay in contact with them by emailing them information and offers that might be of interest with their permission. And you can easily implement multi-part email marketing campaigns so you can stay in contact on a regular basis.

4) Autoresponders are just that…Automatic. Once you set them up, they just do their thing in the background without you having to lift a finger. You can pre-write your emails or newsletters, set them to broadcast on specific dates, then go on vacation.

5) Because autoresponders are Web-based you can use them from anywhere. That means you can do a promotion to sell your latest product from the beach, bookstore or backyard. They are a must-have for any who has—or wants to have—a mobile business.

6) The easiest way to publish a regular e-zine is by using an autoresponder service. Most accommodate both HTML (graphics) and text only formats. I’ve used getresponse.com in the past and heard good things about constantcontact.com as well.

7) If you are doing any kind of e-commerce, having an autoresponder linked to your shopping cart is a must. Use them to communicate order status, or follow up with other items that may be of interest at a later date.

Autoresponders make it easy to be sure every lead and customer gets the right sequence of follow up emails. This is especially helpful if you are teaching a class online or via teleseminar, or if you have a series of items new clients or prospects should receive after contacting you.

9) You can use your autoresponder to send out f*ree reports, or multi-day e-courses. These giveaways are a terrific way to add incentive for signing up for a newsletter, and they let you increase your credibility while providing valuable info to your prospects.

If all this autoresponder stuff sounds like gibberish to you, I highly recommend you experience it first-hand by buying something from Amazon.com.

They have one of the best e-commerce systems I’ve seen, with all kinds of add-on sales and upsells on their site. They also keep in touch with customers via email to let them the status of their order. And they email past customers regularly about promotions or other items that may be of interest.

It’s like going to e-commerce/autoresponder school for the cost of a book. You can’t beat that with a stick. >Comments

• Email marketing continues to bring significant value to businesses with more than 82 percent of respondents planning to increase their email marketing efforts over the next year.
• The more social media grows in popularity among consumers, the more attention it will receive from marketers. Almost 70 percent of small business marketers are employing some sort of social media tactics and a majority (77 percent) indicate that integrating email marketing and social media is either “very important” or “moderately important.”
• The most popular tactics at the moment involve spreading content onto additional mediums such as sharing email newsletters on Twitter (36 percent) and delivering blog posts via email (35 percent).
• Nearly 50 percent of respondents indicated that behavioral targeting increases their conversion rates either significantly or moderately.
• More than 66 percent of respondents indicate they intend to use behavioral targeting as well as sales tracking in their campaigns over the next 12 months.
• 54 percent of respondents indicate they intend to use Facebook as a tool to help build their email lists
• Nearly 20 percent of respondents indicate that integrating email marketing and social media increased customer loyalty
• Almost 12 times as many respondents said that email marketing ROI is more easily measured than social media ROI (61.46 percent versus 5.28 percent)

Comments

Google, one of the most influential players in the search engine optimization market today, has been constantly improving their systems and algorithms in order to accurately rank and measure online businesses in their search engine rankings. Google has this to say with regards to the use of web advertisements to a company’s advantage:
“Potential customers choose your Website over your competitors’ based solely on what they see in your ads. If your ads don’t distinguish your site or really sell your message, then you’re probably missing out on valuable sales.”

Advertisements have become the bulk of a company’s online business today. Many companies produce their own web ads and put in within their web pages while some accept other’s ads and for a fee, put them in their pages. Google has been cracking down on these web ads and have included them in their criteria for ranking a Website. Here are some of the things web developers can do to maximize and take advantage of the web ads on their pages:
1) Be Specific on Your Advertisements

Website visitors have very short attention spans. One almost always visits a site mainly because it was one of the first hits that the search engines have returned to their queries. Websites go to the top of search engine rankings because of the significance that its site offers in relation to a particular keyword or phrase. Developers must take advantage of these brief windows of opportunity by posting ads that are catchy and relevant to the visitors’ searches.

2) Ads Should Also be Keyword-Rich

Advertisements are still a part of a Website. Although present mainly because of income generation, Web ads can still be used as a tool to increase visibility among search engines. Google advises that keyword-rich advertisements should be present in Websites since it is easier for search engines to find them therefore increasing a Website’s chance of going up the search engine rankings.

The messages portrayed on such web advertisements are important as these can entice visitors to the particular advert. Selling the message of the advertisement is as important as their layout and appearance to the customers.

3) Find What Your Unique Selling Points are and Concentrate on These

Like any marketing strategy, search engine optimization also relies on how web developers are able to find niches in the industry or particular market and focus their efforts on these. Web developers should always be on the lookout for these undiscovered or emerging markets so that their products or Websites can be different from the numerous others in the market.

4) Layout Your Website in Such a way That Your ads can be Easily Noticed by Visitors

Not only is it important for ads to be keyword-rich and straight to the point, it is also important for ads to be situated in the website properly. Properly means that the ad will be the immediate thing that your visitors will notice right after they had looked into the articles they are looking for.

Web developers can also make use of heat-mapping SEO software. Optimization of key areas in one’s Website is the foremost agenda of heat mapping. The emergence of heat mapping has greatly helped web developers in evaluating the performance of their sites. This has also helped them further improve on their link building strategies. Heat maps specifically help developers get an idea of where to place their links and advertisements in order to maximize their exposure.

5) Capitalize the Text in your Ads

Though relatively simple, the font of texts in a Web Ad is an often overlooked factor in web advertising. Visitors will not notice ads that have long paragraphs written in them nor will they notice web ads that have indecipherable text within their space.

Visitors will almost always notice ads that have text with lay-out and message that will be of interest to them or their searches. Aside from being direct to the point, it also helps that ads be big and bold enough for visitors to notice and read.

6) Ads Should have Compelling Messages

As was said above, ads that have messages in relation to the website’s contents are more likely to be paid attention to by a visitor. These will be more important to their searches instead of a purely unrelated advert.

7) Web ads Should be Inbound Links Directing Customers to Particular Product Pages and not the Homepage of the Manufacturer

One more thing to remember, especially for start-up web developers, is to be patient and try different techniques and combination for web advertising out there in the market. Most companies find success mainly because they did not give up when one strategy fails them. It should be always kept in mind that like any other business, some search engine optimization and advertising strategy will work for one company while it may not for another. Developers should always find new ways to improve in their advertising and marketing strategies.
Building link popularity is a very tedious process. So much time and effort should be invested by web developers to be able to inch their way to the top of the search engine rankings. There are different tools available in the market today that web developers can use to evaluate and analyze their link building strategies. One of the most popular so far has been these web advertisements. It can direct traffic to your websites as much as inbound and directories can.

Comments

It’s not that PPC doesn’t work, it’s that the campaigns were not set up and managed properly. All too often a PPC campaign is created by the business owner but left to run with little or no management, supervision or oversight. Even a properly (or professionally) set up campaign needs constant oversight.

Proper set-up and management of your PPC campaigns is vitally important to ensure you have a profitable and high ROI PPC campaign. Without effective bid management and ongoing testing of ads and landing pages the campaign will soon be nothing more than an expensive traffic delivery method. As time passes, bid clicks will rise, positioning of ads will fall, landing pages won’t be as targeted and your cost per conversion will increase. Your PPC campaign may continue to deliver both traffic and sales, but the cost of those sales may be outside of your zone of profitability.

Most PPC campaign managers don’t truly know how much the business can afford to pay on a per-click basis. Worse, they don’t manage their overall cost per conversion being delivered. Instead, they look at the cost as a whole, and try to make sure every $100 spent in advertising brings back at least $100 plus the cost of the product or service sold. This is a break even strategy at best–and often times a losing strategy.

Finding the cost per conversion ceiling

For most businesses, the “cost” of a PPC campaign cannot be taken as a whole. Within each product and service category offered, there is a varying degree of profit that must be factored into the overall cost of the campaign. Each of these profit levels must be broken down and/or grouped together in order to ensure that the profitability and success of the campaign can be properly tracked.

When you don’t consider each product or service separately, you’ll likely end up using the profits in one area to pay for a loss in another. When every area is considered separately, you can ensure that each and every area is profitable in its own right.

To manage a PPC campaign successfully you must know your cost per conversion ceiling for each product or service group you offer. With proper tracking you can make sure that every click, regardless of how much it costs, is making–and not costing you–money.

To help you understand this we’ll work our way through a PPC campaign for a fictional company called Sexy Doodads, Inc. I’ll use round numbers in order to make this as painless as possible.

Sexy Doodads, Inc.

Sexy Doodads, Inc. manufactures and sells doodads that they manufacture themselves and also from other manufacturers. The profit margin on doodads they manufacture is greater than those they sell from other manufacturers. Their doodads come in a variety of flavors: red, blue, green, luxury, etc. The color of the doodads doesn’t effect the price much, but luxury doodads are a bit more expensive.

SexyDoodads, Inc. also provides a doodad installation/repair/warranty service. While leads come in online through the PPC account the repair service can only be sold over the phone due to customization requirements. The tools you use to manage your PPC accounts will only give you the cost of conversion to the lead, however not every lead converts to a sale. Therefore we’ll need to incorporate some offline figures in order to figure out the true cost per conversion on these. More on that later.

I’ll walk you through all of the calculations here, but first we want to separate our doodads into groups based on similarity in terms of costs and profits. For our purposes we’ll break them into these five groups, each requiring it’s own set of calculations:

Here we have two brands: X and Y. We can say that brand X is manufacturers by Sexy Doodads, Inc. and Brand Y is all other manufacturers. We could also create a Brand A, B, C, etc. one for each manufacturer if profits and price vary dramatically enough, but there is no need to do that for this example.

We also have a luxury line, both for Brands X and Y. The Luxury sell for a bit more and have better profits which is why they need their own group. Finally, we have a grouping for the Doodad repair service which isn’t a product at all. While covering all five different product groups here can make this post a bit complex to follow, I wanted to make sure you can see how small differences in sales and profit margins can make a big difference in profitability.

How much is your average sale?

If you pay close attention to your business accounting you may already know the answer to the question posed above. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t. While it may not be an important metric when looking at the profitability of your business, it is an important metric in ensuring your PPC campaigns remain profitable. This is our starting point for effective PPC campaign management.

Last year Sexy Doodads, Inc. sold:

They have also kept track of how many individual products sold within each group:

Since there are a number of options within each group the pricing also varies a small amount. You first want to figure out the average sale amount for any product or service group. For each product group simply take the total amount of income received and divide by the total number of sales. For Sexy Doodads, Inc. the average sale amount of each item per item group is as follows:

Remember, we are using round numbers here so these calculations look like something you could simply guess at. But keep in mind most companies sell similar products at different price points. There might be a difference from a few cents to several dollars. We simply created groups based on similar sales price and profit margins.

How much is your profit?

Now that we have an average sale per product, we have to factor in the actual profit margin of each product group in order to make sure our PPC campaigns are profitable. It does you no good to pay $8 to sell a product that costs $5 to manufacture . Figuring out the profit will give us the maximum cost per conversion we need in order to ensure you are making money, not losing it.

To ensure a company makes a profit they usually add a markup cost on the products they sell. Since services don’t have a “markup” in the same way products we’ll consider the markup added to the known cost of installation and repair time.

Here is the markup Sexy Doodads, Inc. adds to the cost of the products they sell:

Markup, however, is not synonymous with profit margin. It is merely the percentage that the price is increased from the cost to purchase or manufacture it yourselves in order to cover additional costs such as shipping, handling, miscellaneous expenses, and (hopefully) a profit.

Since the markup isn’t usually 100% profit on top of all other expenses, I generally adjust it down by 5-15 percentage points to try to create a best guesstimate of the profit margin for each product.

Accordingly, Sexy Doodad, Inc.’s estimated profit margins are as follows:

To figure out the profit of each product group, you need to multiply the average sale amount found earlier by estimated profit margin:

Additional Steps for Leads

PPC tracking mechanisms stop once the online “conversion” is made. This might be a sale that is completed, a form that is submitted, or even an information sheet that is downloaded. When dealing with leads, because the sale is handled offline you have to factor in some additional components to ensure you truly find your maximum cost per conversion ceiling.

The profit per sale noted above is accurate for leads only if you converted 100% of your leads. Generally that’s not the case. You have to factor in your actual conversion rate of the leads that you get.

Let’s say you close 50% of the leads that come from the PPC campaign. You have to multiply that percentage by the “profit” you get from the leads:

Maximum Cost Per Conversion

The profit figures above tell you the absolute maximum cost per conversion ceiling for each product group. This is your break even point. If you keep your cost per conversion (not cost per click!) under these amounts then you will never lose money on PPC. If your cost per conversion is higher then those figures then you are losing money. Ideally you want to find the sweet spot where you are as far under that ceiling as possible without cutting into your ability to drive traffic and sales.

One other point to make about these figures: Now that you can clearly see which product groups give you the best profits, you want to focus the majority of your PPC efforts (and spending) on those product groups. Much money is wasted in PPC by spending money on the groups that get the most clicks instead of those that get the most profit. Sometimes they are one in the same, but not always. By directing your funds to the higher profit campaigns you can make sure you get more profit for every dollar spent!

The information here is a good starting point for most businesses. The calculations provided are pretty easy to work out and will give you a strong base of reference for optimizing your PPC campaign.

But many industries in competitive fields may find it difficult to tweak their campaigns enough to get their cost per conversion under the profit figures calculated here. As much as I want to say that these figures represent your maximum cost per conversion, they don’t. There is additional data that can be factored in such as product re-purchase rates, customer faithfulness and retention, and more. Factoring in these additional components will give you a little more leeway in getting your PPC campaigns profitable while bringing in as much converting traffic as possible without going over budget.

I’ll address these additional components in the advanced version of this post which picks up where this one leaves off. The goal is to find that absolute sweet spot of profitability to ensure you get the most out of your PPC campaign.

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Joel Book from Exact Target introduced the case study:  Creating brand advocates is as important as creating brand awareness. [I would say more important. An advocate proactively shares the brand experience]. Funny, Google “brand tattoos” to see some serious brand advocate activity.

How are marketers using digital media to engage?

• email + crm
• email + social

Email and CRM help to automate interaction. Automation is the key because marketing staff and budgets are not increasing. In order to continue deliver personal and timely messages to customers, you need to automate.

Social participation brings customers together and provides an opportunity to include a call to action to join a newsletter.

Brands are aligning themselves with a specific cause, to add to their brand image.

Genworth Financial case study:

Genworth sells their insurance products through brokers, not directly to consumers.

Reduced marketing resources along with the expectation to have successful marketing campaigns let them to realize that more is not always better. It’s more important to send the right message to the right customer at the right time. Genworth understood the need to personalize communications and to offer in multiple mediums.

They started their email efforts with a business unit and have now expanded to 20 businesses. In 2006 100k emails were being sent and now 3.79 million emails are delivered as part of their program.

Personalized messages are critical to their email marketing. Email newsletters are personalized for the customer and according to the Genworth sales person. Open rates are 7-10% higher when the email comes from the sales person.

Email has realized cost savings as an alternative to print direct mail. Most new product introductions are launched only via email.  Emails were highly personalized and customized, which is very expensive to do in print. $3 million in print and direct mail cost savings were realized in 2009 for one of their marketing efforts.

Increased productivity is attributed to email and Genworth is able to use dynamic content and salesforce.com integration to create 700 highly customized emails every Friday.

Email – high ROI. Example: A co-branded campaign delivered highly personalized emails with Genworth customer logo, contact info and was distributed on behalf of Genworth customers (insurance brokers) resulting in a 12% increase in sales ($ millions) with only a $420 spend.

Efficiency of data integration and dynamic content. Customers used to receive 1-5 emails for each product. Now they only receive 1 with all info consolidated. Genworth used to have 4 FT employees and now only need one to manage email. This is as result of integration with salesforce.com and using exacttarget.com.

Timeframe to get completely setup including installation and testing: 1-2 months.

Creating self serve email templates for sales teams helps them become more efficient.

Enhanced reporting and metrics are available with data integration based on salesforce.com custom objects. Ex: what type of customers open and click the most. What’s working and what’s not.

Email Integration with Social Media has been tentative because of working in a regulated industry. However, the need to better engage with customers motivated them to move forward, albeit, tentatively.

One example is an email newsletter and blog. The blog is hosted on Active Rain (a real estate community). The newsletter gives a snippet of information and then links to a longer form of content on the writer’s blog. On the blog, readers can make comments and ask questions.  A loop is created by including a call to action on the blog to subscribe to the e-newsletter for people that get to the blog via other means.

A Facebook fan page was used as a destination for a national brand advertising campaign designed to recognize caregivers.  Genworth used online advertising, PPC, SEO, social advertising and Genworth producer and consumer web sites to promote. They now have over 7,000 fans. Most successful was Facebook advertising.

Email was used to drive traffic to Facbook and inspire participation and engagement. More awareness and education for products are expected to increase sales.

It’s essential to deliver content in the formats and mediums that your customers want. Integrating data with dynamic content in a combined Email, CRM and Social Media effort can help marketers become more efficient, effective and profitable.

Comments

The reasoning behind VMBiz can be found in the company’s slogan: “Giving you the power of TV advertising with the ease of email”. It certainly sounds like a solid premise, and one which could potentially grow as online video awareness increases.

Ken Taylor, co-creator of VMBiz explains further the benefits of the service, “What we have developed is the power of television advertising delivered with the convenience and cost efficiency of email. Basically it’s a TV ‘infomercial’ production of up to 2 minutes duration about your company presenting the benefits of why a customer should be doing business with you which is delivered directly to your target audience via email.”

“The type of email advertising that the company offers is a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising and your reach is far more accurate if you take into account you can target your audience and harness the power of viral marketing. We script, produce, shoot, host and stream the advertising.”

It certainly is hard to argue with Taylor’s reasoning, though there are reasons why the idea hasn’t quite reached a heightened sense of popularity. First, while video email commercials are cheaper than traditional TV commercials, it’s still more expensive than text or static image based email campaigns. Then you have to look at stats to see if the videos lead to greater exposure than other campaigns.

Another hurdle for TV email is the mindset of users. Many use their email for communication, and quick contact with others. A video embed is something which simply doesn’t compute with a lot of people. Thus, leading to many video emails being overlooked.

While there are some roadblocks, there are many potential benefits which could send video emails soaring in popularity. While many people don’t have video on the brain when sifting through emails, their overall awareness of online video is increasing. As viewership for sites such as YouTube, and Hulu increase so will the overall scope of how video is perceived online. Thus, providing a potential sky rocketing investment for the future.

Another added benefit of video emails is engaging a user on a different level than text/image campaigns. There’s a reason that TV advertising resonates with so many; it’s because they are much more engaged with video than simply reading or looking at pretty pictures.

It’s difficult to gauge for sure at this point, but seeing video email advertising grow and expand it’s reach certainly has to pique the interest of many.