I have been asked numerous times if "Email marketing is dead" and the answer is "absolutely not". The best approach to email marketing now is to evolve it. Take that e-blast and make it work on more levels now. Integrate new media into the e-blast to make it more effective. Repurpose that e-blast so that in addition to sending out a blast to people's email addresses, you also use that same content and send it out via social networks and other marketing methods to reach people that may not utilize their email. Also, you want to make sure that your e-blasts incorporate text, images, video and links to make them much more engaging and interactive. Of course, keep in mind, e-blasts can not actually have video that plays in "all" email clients, but if you have a screen shot of the video inside the e-blast, then when people click the video screen shot, they will be taken to a landing page that should look identical to the e-blast, and they can play the video from there.
So, let's get specific, how should churches and ministries evolve their e-blast content? I'm glad you asked. First, as stated above, integrate optimized vivid images and videos into your e-blasts. This form of content is very engaging and results in higher click thru's and response rate. Next, in order to effectively evolve an e-blast you want to repurpose the e-blast content and send it out via other marketing channels such as social networks and blogs.
So here is an example, ABC ministries has an e-blast for a monthly newsletter. This newsletter is also located on their website at www.abcmin.org/newsletter/. Therefore, here is what they can do:
1. E-blast the newsletter out using a service such as constant contact to their email list
2. Put up a new post on their Facebook Fan page saying that the monthly newsletter is out and put a link to it.
3. Send out a tweet from their twitter account saying that the monthly newsletter is out and put a link to it
4. Take the top articles from the newsletter and put blurbs from them on the ministry blog and then have a link back to the actual article in the newsletter from the blog.
5. If there are any videos in the newsletter they can be put on Youtube.com and the facebook fan page with a link back to the newsletter put in the description or on the actual video.
There are numerous other things that can be done to enhance the e-blast and market it but I just wanted to give a few examples to show that email marketing is alive and well, it’s just no longer the lone focus of a marketing strategy, it now has friends that can help market the ministry.