There’s this tendency, where each year we see multiple articles declare the death of a certain marketing trend. The titles may read along these lines: “It’s 2017, <Insert Marketing Technique> Is Dead”. Any sensible person should know better than to believe this blindly and take it easy. Most of the times, the technique at hand isn’t going anywhere.
Consider the fax machine for a minute. I know, that’s a stretch. No one uses fax anymore, right? Wrong! As long as paper documents will exist, so will the facsimile machine. So if your client is highly into fax (like for example doctors in certain countries) then fax it up. Then there’s the issue of privacy and security, which seem to be easier to manage within the telephone network, but let me stop right there and not digress any more. You get the gist.
Now, when it comes to marketing and sales, it’s always been tough to make accurate predictions and statements that would apply to a wide range of businesses. For instance, it’s plain silly to ask for the best days to send newsletters. There are just too many factors involved.
Another thing is that as soon as marketers create overkill, using the same technique on an increasingly wide scale, it loses the power it once had. As always, Gary Vee delivers the facts:
When cold emailing is NOT working
Admittedly, cold emailing isn’t an exception. It does indeed become less effective in certain areas. For instance, it’s not working for c-level execs in Fortune 500 companies as it used to. It’s definitely not dead in general, though.
There might be a couple of reasons why your cold mailing campaign isn’t working:
- In cold mailing you leverage scalability (in contrast to inbound marketing), so if your campaign didn’t performed well, it’s possible that your target group is too narrow.
- Cold mailing is all about personalization, so if it’s not working, it might mean your copy is too general or your target group is too wide (probably both).
- You give up too fast or you are just afraid to stalk your prospects, sending too little follow-ups.
Or, say, you have a startup that’s just won round A financing. Seems to be the perfect target, the money’s right there for you to grab. Bullshit! That’s when they get hundreds of emails with offers, after the press release hits the media and stop reading them real quick.
Such downfalls create the impression that certain marketing technique is no longer working, when in reality, it’s all about the right timing, or identifying buying triggers.
How do you become immune to the “dead” claims?
What you need to understand is that people lose focus and attention fast, and today’s fad becomes a distant memory tomorrow. Thus, they’re quick to pronounce the things they’re bored with “dead”.
That said, there’s money to make where you can apply a method that people haven’t had the chance to get used to yet. It might be proclaimed dead in some narrow niches in the US, where it’s been around for a while and it’s well known, but in developing countries cold mailing still works wonders.
A smart marketer will make sure to tweak his technique, not letting it die. You can, for example, experiment with various cold email templates to generate more leads or design a compelling sales introduction email copy.
There’s a number of other unpopular marketing techniques that have been undergoing evolution to stay afloat and adapt. These include cold calling, popup ads, or leaflets being handed to you in the streets.
You have to stay woke and remember that “X is dead” type articles are often developed by people who want to influence your behavior by selling something new. It’s a great pitch. Sometimes, it’s just not as real as it seems to be.
Adaptation, adjustment, and timing
What great sales execs are able to do is recognize when something is dead indeed by looking at their own data instead of clickbaits. User behavior patterns are a great indicator of changes taking place. You won’t be able to win Baby Boomers with Snapchat in the next 24 months, or get through to a tech company via Yellow Pages.
Every target group will have its own communication channels and it’s your job to adjust. It’s crucial to stay on your toes and figure out what still works and what’s died.
So, is email still used to buy and sell? Duh, of course it is, and not just in B2B but also in e-commerce. Anyone who says otherwise is talking nonsense. For instance, GMail app has found its way to over 1 billion Android devices.
Here’s a look at some recent, staggering GMail stats, by the way.
Final word
Made it all the way up here? Great! Expect a neat, science-based answer to why cold emailing isn’t dead? Uhm, there isn’t one, really.
It’s not like we used the title as a clickbait, like this guy (but we were tempted to):
Email as a tool is here to stay, and you’re just being scammed with clickbait post titles by people pushing their own agendas. Now, instead of obsessing over these posts, identify your target group, learn where they hangout in the web, craft your message, and generate some leads!
