The Evolution of Email Marketing

// By Althea Fung //

Marketers from Humana and Johns Hopkins Medicine weigh in on the value of email marketing. Effective strategies for consumer engagement are also more efficient for marketers.

If you’re an email marketer, you’ve likely heard the refrain “Email marketing is dead” countless times. But that’s just not true. A Pew Research survey found that 92 percent of adult internet users use email. That’s compared to 79 percent of internet users who have a social media profile. In addition, email is more efficient than social media: About 90 percent of email gets delivered to the intended inbox compared to only 2 percent of social media posts.

Shivani Srivastava, AVP, product head of marketing technology, Humana

“There’s been this concept that email marketing is dead, with all these channels and ways of interacting with people. But it isn’t. It’s very much alive,” says Shivani Srivastava, AVP, product head of marketing technology at Humana. “Consumers are using email, and so are companies because it’s the cheapest and most effective way to meet.”

Although email marketing isn’t dead, it is evolving. In a webinar hosted by Argyle Forum, Srivastava and Theresa Lockemy, director of internet marketing and social engagement at Johns Hopkins Medicine, discussed how their teams are adapting to the shifting email marketing landscape.

Creating a User Journey

With the move away from third-party data, Lockemy says that developing a first-party data and a consent-driven strategy is critical to providing a better user experience. She says her team has seen great success by thinking of the user’s journey instead of focusing on individual communication moments.

“[We’re] really looking at creating a user journey — nurturing someone through and providing them with information as they’re making a decision, versus just doing a search engine marketing campaign or a display campaign, where you’re driving to a web page,” Lockemy says.

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