eMarketing Conference Report

Last week I was a panelist at eM8, eMarketing Association’s annual conference. Here are my net new learnings:

• Yes, marketing budgets are being squeezed, but eMarketing budgets continue to expand. Why? With eMarketing, you can do more with less, it is effective (e.g. email marketing ROI hovers at $48), and there is more accountability.
• Email marketing and search marketing remain most popular tools of the eMarketing trade.
• Create tight-copy-coupling between emails and landing pages.
• One new list building tactic: create call-to-actions, such as eNewsletter sign-ups, on your blogs.
• New tools that combine blogging and seo are emerging.
• Most presentations were long on stats and short on practical examples of eMarketing.
• Marketers are confused by plethora of eMarketing options and aren’t really sure how to allocate the budgets across the right set of options. eMarketing strategy is not that well understood.

Some presentations were great and some were okay. What amazed me was that most presentations were too text-heavy, and hard-to-read. Aren’t marketers the ones who dazzle others and like to be dazzled too? Hmm…