RE: Email Marketing – The Court Has Reached a Verdict
And on the charge of murder in the first degree, the people of digital marketing find the defendant, Social Media, not guilty.
So the next time someone lazily extends the old cliche that social media killed email marketing, you be sure to tell them you know the juicy truth: social media didn’t kill email marketing.
Email marketing killed email marketing.
How’s that for a plot twist?
You’ve got mail!
Email was once a happy alternative to postal mail for teens who rarely got anything addressed to them before junior year. Three simple words: “you’ve got mail!” Now that signaled possibility. And it signaled new horizons for us as higher ed marketers too. Finally, we had an alternative to call lists and pricey direct mail.
On came the brigade of emails led by hawkish subject lines like “PAY YOUR TUITION” and “IMPORTANT: READ THIS” (Yes in all caps. Own it.) And worse, when we weren’t spelling out fatalistic scenarios in our communications, we were droning on and on about things no one really cares about under the guise of “campus news.”
At our least offensive, we were totally boring and often irrelevant. Are we really surprised that our email list ran away with social media?
That’s the smoking gun that email marketers have been desperate to hide. Because it’s easier to say that email is dead than to admit that we smothered our students with it like the helicopter moms of digital communications. And what’s worse, we tried to blame it on social media – the cool new friend – and then in full denial expected social media to just take its place.
On the verge of a second rejection, here we are, going back to the beginning, trying to figure out when it all went wrong.
Luckily thanks to in-platform insights and Google Analytics, this time around we have a little thing called data a.k.a. “facts” on our hands. Because it’s time to exonerate social media once and for all.
No (email) body, no murder?
Social media didn’t kill email marketing because email marketing was never dead. We pushed our own needs too hard, and our students simply left once they realized they could. Now, at the cusp of repeating history a la social media, it’s time to reflect.
We must trust our students to think for themselves. We must always remember what will happen if we don’t (#ByeFelicia).
Our students are experiencing life on their own for the first time, and they deserve a little respect while they take that first step toward figuring this whole college thing out.
If we strike the right tone, in which we acknowledge their adulthood while also sneaking them truly helpful information, in most cases we’ll find that our students are eager to have that cool mom/friend communication relationship that comes with respectful independence and mutual boundaries. Rather than a consequence filled directive, they’re asking for a peer-to-peer sharing of information sprinkled with a little bit of digital vocal fry.
Some of us have rightfully been terrified to connect social media back to email for fear of seeming overly aggressive and self-serving. But done right, social media is simply another communications platform for sharing helpful information with friends with mutual interests. As long as the content is relevant, timely, and in some way makes their life more enjoyable, it’s a go.
Don’t cross that line!
However this is a fine, mutually agreed upon line.
When the sell becomes overt and the personal connection is lost to one-sided goals and outcomes, we risk losing our students at all levels of communication. That doesn’t alter the axiom “we can’t be everything to everyone everywhere.” We need to remain realistic and strategic about how we enrich the relationships we have with our primary audience base.
But finding a balance between useful for them and useful for higher ed marketers is the key to a healthy communications relationship in the integrated marketing family. That, I think we can agree, has been proven over and over beyond a reasonable doubt.
Court adjourned.
Meet the Author: Allison O’Leary
Allison O’Leary is the Assistant Director of Public Affairs at Southern Connecticut State University.
She is also a graduate of Higher Ed Experts’ professional certificate program on social media marketing for higher ed.