Biggest Challenge for Email Marketing 2011 – Good Content Copywriting

MarketingSherpa’s latest Email Marketing Benchmark Report is about to be released, and judging from the table of contents, it’s substantial and important for those who rely on email for their marketing.
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We all get way too much email, so I would have thought the most significant challenge to email marketing effectiveness would be deliverability and getting people to opt in. But apparently not. The number one challenge is targeting recipients with highly relevant content.
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What’s interesting about these findings is that the one thing a company can control pretty easily is content copywriting. No one from the outside filters your copywriting while it’s being written.  
MarketingSherpa says, “Email marketers continue to struggle with the challenge of delivering highly relevant content to their target audiences…Developing a sufficient amount of content is a time-intensive process that many marketers do not have the resources to produce.” (That last comment should raise the eyebrows of a few marketing consultants who make a living writing targeted, effective content.)

Growing your lists, deliverability and being perceived as spam are challenges that are out of your control, to some degree. But creating targeted content?

I understand that it takes time to segment your lists, determine what people may want from you, stay relevant, and provide value. But if you don’t do that, then don’t be surprised if your open and click-through rates drop and your emails are perceived as spam.

If you spend the time and money on your email content, you will see your email marketing ROI go up. And here’s why.  Your time and effort limits will probably mean you send out fewer emails, but they will be far more effective.
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And you'll be doing all of us a service by lessening the amount of useless email we receive daily.
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