We spend a lot of time researching the many ways that local retail advertising is changing from traditional media to digital. A great example of how retailers are moving to digital is in the growth of email over the last several years, including a 19% growth this past year.
This chart is from a post on The Retail Email Blog where they write,
Major retailers sent their subscribers a record number of promotional email during 2012 as the shift continues from traditional marketing channels to higher ROI digital marketing channels. During 2012, the top online retailers sent each of their subscribers an average of 210 promotional emails, which is an increase of 19% over the 177 emails sent in 2011.Since 2007, retailers have increased the number of promotional emails they have sent to each of their subscribers by more than 120%.
If you’re trying to build your brand locally the big idea here is to add email marketing to your online ad builder or marketing portal for your dealers.
One of the best ways to help your retailers use email is to build and host promotional landing pages for them to link to from their email efforts. Or, better yet, handle the whole email campaign for them.
Either way the ROI is far better in email than in direct mail and the proof is in the chart above.