A recent survey conducted in Boston, MA, by smartFOCUS revealed that a staggering 75% of respondents had bought products or services as a direct result of receiving an email from a vendor. The story, found in Reuters, also exposed that the preferred method of receiving marketing messages from vendors was email (62%), followed by direct mail (23%) and social media (13%). Not surprisingly, telemarketing was the least preferred method of receiving marketing messages, with 80% of survey respondents placing it as their least preferred method. The study also revealed that the majority of the products purchased as the result of email marketing were clothing and accessories (82%), followed by coffee shop and restaurant purchases (49%), grocery items (40%), and personal electronics (38%). With social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter booming, social media marketing was profoundly effective with 40% of social media users admitting to receiving marketing through these sites.
Certainly with the technological revolution, regular mail is becoming more and more obsolete as e-mail has continued to evolve into the new standard. Email is less obtrusive, and by far more convenient for marketing purposes, both on the vendors’ end and the user end. The recent smartFOCUS study coincides with this, and shows that email is dominating as the new preferred method for marketing. This study along with other research suggests even more advertisers will direct their advertisements and marketing through email, which will make the inbox more crowded and deliverability more competitive.
