ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Ever get frustrated by how many emails you get from stores and brands? Well, so has Sarah Gonzalez with our Planet Money podcast.
SARAH GONZALEZ, BYLINE: Can I just vent to you for a little bit?
CYNTHIA PRICE: Yes.
GONZALEZ: Cynthia Price is an email marketing expert at a company called Litmus.
OK, so I get an email a day from, it seems like, every store I have ever interacted with ever, in any way, shape or form, and I don't know why. Like, who buys things from an email that they get?
PRICE: A lot of people.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. Of all the forms of marketing, somehow, email has one of the highest returns on investment. Cynthia says, let's say you're a store with 100,000 people on your email list, and you send out an email that's, like, spring deals are in bloom. Just, like, 3% of those people are actually going to click through to your store's website to see any of your spring deals.
PRICE: That's not to mention the people that are going to buy from it.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, even fewer are actually going to buy something. So not that many people bite, but some do, and that's apparently worth it. For every $1 spent on email marketing, there is a 42- to 48-dollar return on investment for the store.
That's the average.
PRICE: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: That's a real stat?
PRICE: It's a real stat.
GONZALEZ: A 4,000% return on investment?
PRICE: Yeah. It is incredibly effective.
GONZALEZ: Part of that is just that email is cheap, right? You're paying for someone to write an email, maybe make it pretty. But the bigger thing is you invited these stores into your inbox.
PRICE: You have actually raised your hand and said, yeah, send me promotional emails in some way, shape or form.
GONZALEZ: You probably bought something from them, so it's just more likely that you will buy something again.
PRICE: Which just is, like, an entirely different world to play in as a marketer than it would be if I was trying to target everyone on Instagram who is between the ages of 20 and 25.
GONZALEZ: It's expensive to get your ad in front of people online. And sure, Instagram marketing is also relentless, and it feels like all social media just knows everything about our wants and likes and buying patterns. But Cynthia says, email marketing, they actually know we want their content. But do we, though? Cynthia acknowledges that inundating us with email, like many stores do, can backfire.
PRICE: You're going to unsubscribe because you're so annoyed by it, or you will completely learn to just completely tune them out, and you won't even look at what the subject line says at all. You probably are already there.
GONZALEZ: Oh, I'm there. And unsubscribing is kind of like the biggest fail in marketing land of, like, you had me and you blew it. You lost me. But some stores don't really care if they damage their reputation with us. We have to wake up every single morning to 30 marketing emails just because someone else out there is going to buy something. And Cynthia says some brands do hit a sweet spot. Like, there's a snowboarding gear company that sends out emails whenever there's fresh snow on the mountains, targeted to your location - like, the closest mountain to you with fresh snow. That seems useful. And Cynthia says she actually enjoys getting store emails.
PRICE: I think it's around 60% of people say that email is their preferred way to communicate with brands. And I think it...
GONZALEZ: I mean, as opposed to, like, a phone call from a store, then yes, sure. I would prefer an email to a phone call.
PRICE: Or, like, a banner ad or a text message.
GONZALEZ: Yes, I also don't want text messages. Point is, getting an email a day from a store - probably here to stay. Sarah Gonzalez, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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