The Second Coming of Email Marketing
The Second Coming of Email Marketing
Could there be a second coming of email marketing in 2019? A very interesting event happened last month that sent shock waves throughout the antispam community. The infamous online Google antispam newsgroup called news.admin.net-abuse.email was literally shut down by Google itself after receiving hundreds of complaints from a particular disgruntled member (and attorney) whom was being harassed by other members with disturbing sexual allegations. The 16-year-old online forum about email marketing abuse which DOXed (search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the Internet, typically with malicious intent)) several spammers and antispammers alike for the purpose of exposing each other is now dead, or at least it appears to be.
A mirror backup site called NARKIVE has literally blocked the 1.3 million posts with an internal server error so no one at this time can see anything about email marketing abuse and its perpetrators. Antispammers have claimed that this is not a big deal and will more than likely do nothing to the community, however, the Google Group was so popular with search engines that it literally helped to expose abusive spammers, and now, their names are missing because Google has taken everything down. Could this enable another wave of email marketing for legacy mailers or simply die with the rest of the email marketing industry as most are saying?
In 2012, an email marketer named Andrew Stephens created a group called Stophaus which tried to DOX and expose the leaders in the antispam movement. The idea slowly gained ground and sparked a nasty fight between marketers and abuse handlers giving email marketing experts information in which they could use to help get their campaigns out. You would think this war of DOXing spammers and antis would end the Google forum back then, but it didn’t. Stophaus was defeated and the accusers went underground as the antispam community grew stronger. What remained was a plethora of information relating to both sides where emailers and antis could not hide from search engines.
16 years of legacy information (the fight to stop spam) has been ceased and erased leaving many questions about the future of email marketing, open. Now since social media marketing has settled and prices are increasing, is email marketing going to make a comeback? Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group, seems to think so. In an interesting article published in Upwork, he explains, “The honeymoon with social media may be over. That doesn’t mean that society’s love affair with social media networks is over. It just means that perceptions may be changing. Digital marketers are starting to take note of what the numbers are saying – email is hands down more effective. Users and brands are also starting to take issue with the direction that social media is going in.”
Michael quotes Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute as well, “some of the big social media influencers are becoming frustrated with all the algorithm changes that social media channels have been making to accommodate the shift to paid advertising. 2016 saw a push towards paid ads and revenue growth. While on one hand, this gives brands the ability to spend less time on social media – they can use paid promotion to get their brand recognition – it also diminishes the freedom and dynamism that this medium is known for.” Social media marketing is getting expensive, too. According to The Content Factory, “Creating a comprehensive strategy for social media marketing and outsourcing all work for all channels (with a minimum of two social networks) costs anywhere from $3,000-$20,000 per month, with the industry average settling between $4,000-$7,000 per month.” While email marketing costs have not risen so dramatically in cost since 2008 when social media came on to the scene.
With the information on high profile spammers and undercover antis lost, while social media marketing costs are rising, could email marketing be 2019’s favorite marketing trend? Since there is no end to IPv6 and the latest scripts which can put a server up in 7 minutes, email marketing is getting easier, faster and cheaper. Consumers still check email first before logging into a social media account, so a new war may be on the way between emailers and antis. Crucial identifying information has been lost and this could mean a new rise in email marketing. Although antis won the war back in 2012, they could have shot themselves in the foot by allowing kooks to spread malicious rumors back and forth. Thus creating a second coming of email marketing, so to speak.
James Carner
CEO | eHygienics
How does email list hygiene fit into all this? Contact me to find out!
