This poor economy has left entire business sectors on shaky ground. Many have feared that marketing would be among them. However, it appears that what is actually taking place in the marketing industry is something of a refocusing on what works and what is cost effective. Our regular readers will already know that this certainly includes email marketing, among certain other forms of internet-based advertising.

A new study by Round2 gives us a better idea of the way that things are shaking out. While there is plenty of bad news for tradition print and television advertisers, there is just as much good news for the online marketing business.

The study’s main weakness was that it only provided simple yes/no information about the respondents’ spending intentions, rather than real numerical data. So we can only see what percentage of companies are spending more or less on any particular advertising medium, not how much those companies are spending.

However, the study results still provide an interesting and potentially useful glimpse into the marketing industry’s reaction to the economic downturn.

As you can see, traditional print advertising seems to be the hardest hit medium, with 46.6% of respondents reporting that they will decrease spending in this area. Even direct mail marketing is suffering a loss of support. However, email marketing sits easily on top of the new medium in terms of expanding adoption.

This is likely because email is a medium that companies are familiar and comfortable with, and that has been shown to be highly effective and efficient. Email marketing is something that can be done entirely in-house with very little up-front investment, and that allows for very detailed response tracking through the use of an integrated software package like ActiveCampaign Email Marketing Software.

We recently discussed the explosion of direct email marketing compared to other types of consumer outreach. We discussed some of the unique advantages of email marketing as a medium, as well as some of the economic reasons for its growth.

One thing we did not explore is the fact that opt in email marketing may be getting more effective over time. This is counter-intuitive to some extent. Most marketers would expect that the more email newsletters and special offers a company sends out, the more likely they are to induce consumer fatigue become invisible to their most important market segments.

In certain ways this is true. You don’t want to send out a deluge of messages only to find that you have desensitized your audience. But even though email marketing may not necessarily gain effectiveness at the individual level, on the whole you can count on the fact that people are becoming more technologically savvy. As this happens, people should become more and more comfortable with online marketing replacing their traditional offline counterparts. More importantly, they should become more responsive to online direct marketing.

According to a new study by the prominent marketing firm Epsilon, this is exactly what is taking place. The study found that the upcoming generation of adults (ages 18-25) are more receptive to opt in email offers than their older peers.

A higher percentage of millennials report that they want to receive certain types of permission-based emails more than once a day including specials/offers from online merchants (34%), entertainment (32%), sports (28%), special offers from traditional (offline) retailers (26%), electronics information (21%), and telecommunications information (21%).

Millennials want to receive offers more often and are willing to stay in programs rather than their elders who are more likely to unsubscribe.

The researchers concluded that using email segmentation to target specific demographics is particularly important in light of this data. While we agree with this conclusion and strongly support the use of highly personalized and well-segmented email marketing campaigns, we also see a message of encouragement for early adopters of internet-based forms of marketing and advertisement.

As the important younger generation of adults continue to fill positions of power and prominence, the companies that have worked to form relationships with them will also prosper. This is an important time to start gaining experience with direct online marketing. The sooner you buy email marketing software and start building up your mailing list, the more entrenched you’ll become in the most valuable segments of your market.

Direct marketing has been the leading form of advertisement ever since the invention of the printing press. It is more effective and efficient than any other type of marketing because it allows marketers to connect directly with their audience. By targeting specific demographics and studying the habits of your customers, you can open a direct window into the needs of your market. And, of course, the success of any business hinges on finding and filling a specific need for a specific group of people.

So by contacting each individual personally, you have a much greater opportunity to engage them in a discussion about what it is that they need and how it is that you can help them with that. And the more closely you are able to follow along with the nuances of each subgroup within your target market, the better you’ll be able to convince them that you have a solution for exactly what ails them.

There has never been a more powerful tool for achieving this type of direct dialog with massive amounts of people than through direct e-mail marketing.

That is one of the reasons why email marketing is far and away the fastest growing segment of the direct marketing industry. The latest Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) Communications Industry Forecast estimates the total 2008 spending for email marketing communications at $11.8 billion. When you take into account the incredibly low material costs for e-mail marketing, that is a staggering figure. Even more impressive is the 18.5% estimated growth rate for this segment over the next 5 years.

VSS Executive Vice President Eric Buhler states that email marketing “will be bigger than catalogs and comparable to telesales spending,” largely because it is just so cost effective. Compared to traditional brand management and mass advertising efforts, email marketing also provides a much shorter and easier path to measuring return on investment. The marketer can measure response at every step of the way, even going so far as to split test your most effective messages against each other in order to squeeze every last drop of consumer response out of your email campaign.

Return on investment is everything in this economy. More than ever, business owners are having to pay very close attention to how much money is going out and the rate at which it is returning. Even when it comes to a medium as efficient as email marketing, there are still difficult decisions to be made.

For example, the choice between using a hosted email marketing service versus a standalone email marketing software product. In a better economic climate, the choice to use a hosted service can amount to just a small slice of your marketing budget. But at a time when total advertising spending is down nearly 8%, the extra expense of using a service instead of an in-house direct email marketing solution is money that could be more effectively spent on a high-powered copywriter.

Many business owners fail to realize what an excellent opportunity email marketing provides for developing lasting relationships with customers and potential customers who you meet offline. In much the same way that regular mailings can keep visitors coming back to your web site, they can also keep visitors coming back to your brick & mortar location. Regular e-mail contact with offline customers also provides all the other benefits of email marketing to online clients: increased brand recognition, improved familiarity and trust, and an opportunity for you to expand the perceived usefulness of your products and services.

There are a near infinite variety of ways in which you can recruit mailing list subscribers offline, and the ways that are appropriate for your business will depend on the opportunities for interacting with clients that your business normally affords you. For example, if you run a retail business, it is both simple and highly effective to simply place a signup sheet on the counter. An even better tactic is to ask each customer if they would like to sign up for your e-mail list as they are checking out.

If you work with clients over longer-term projects or in a business-to-business setting, there are even more strategies you can employ to encourage contacts to sign up for your mailing list. One very simple way to do this is to advertise your newsletter on your business card. Just a few words describing the information you provide in the mailings and a URL to sign up at will draw more subscribers than you might expect, and they will tend to be very high-quality and high-converting subscribers.

These days it is standard practice to send a follow-up e-mail to a new contact, and this is a perfect opportunity to mention your newsletter in a way that can come across as more helpful than self-promoting. You should also very seriously consider adding a small advertisement for your newsletter to your e-mail signature and also onto your letterhead and invoices. This way everyone you come in contact with in a professional capacity will become aware of the additional information that you provide, which in turn will keep them aware of your products and services.

Any event at which you are speaking or presenting information is also a fantastic opportunity to build up your mailing list. Let your audience know what you provide through the list and why it will be helpful to them. Then simply pass around a signup sheet or collect business cards for people that would like to subscribe. These are methods of generating highly qualified leads that will pay off greatly in the long term. Follow this link for more email marketing tips.