Written by Mikaela Revel

It's increasingly commonplace in our modern world of tech innovation and social media scrolling to consider our older, less exciting technologies as ineffective or replaced. As marketers in an age of communication innovation, it's very easy to get caught up in the buzz and assume that our clients also have a solid 2,000 or more unread emails in their inbox - so why bother trying to reach them this way?

I urge you to think again.

In a recent survey conducted by Institutional Investor - 89% of our asset owner clients prefer to be marketed to through email. We offered a long list of traditional and new marketing channels in the survey, including LinkedIn, industry publications and conferences, asking them to select their top three - email came out on top and by a long way. The 'Market Insight Survey' is being conducted for the asset management marketing community as part of our European Marketing Institute, launched earlier this year. The surveys are currently live and the full results will be shared exclusively with the members of this institute at the roundtable in Paris, May 21st.

"89% of our asset owner clients prefer to be marketed to through email."
 

So, how is it effective? - First, let's make the important differentiation between B2B and B2C marketing. It's easy to put our consumer hat on and think, OK well my Gmail account is an endless scroll of colourful, unread offers, invites and news - but what story does your Outlook tell? Outlook, for many including myself is a workflow tool, a check-in point throughout the day - if you think about it, it's the perfect place to get your message to your clients.

Second, it's targeted. Having access to someone's email address is the golden ticket to ensuring they receive your marketing - it's a feature that targeted advertising and social media ads are desperately trying to mimic.

"Having access to someone's email address is the golden ticket"
 

So, at nearly 50 years old, email is certainly not dead and not close to retirement either - according to Waterford Technologies, email remains the most popular form of electronic communication in business and is forecast to remain at the top in our post-GDPR world.

With that, I would say, email marketing does have a place in our inboxes and should form a part of any B2B marketing strategy. Now, it's up to us to get that 'open, click, action!'

Sources:

1. Institutional Investor Market Insight Survey 2019 The survey is currently live for institutional investors to share their views. The results will be published exclusively for members of the European Marketing Institute - a community open to asset manager marketers - find out if you are eligible to become a member here. Alternatively you can contact marketing@iilondon.com/

2. https://waterfordtechnologies.com/email-still-top-communication-tool-2017/