May 2017 - Parks & Recreation - 20

Community Center
Email Marketing
Still the killer app to beat for park and recreation agencies
By Joe Dysart

W

hile many park and recreation agencies are chasing the latest digital
marketing craze, good old email marketing is still the killer app to
beat when it comes to return on investment (ROI).
" There are some unique benefits that email marketing has over
social media that cannot be denied, " says Creighton Wright, director of the City
of American Canyon (California) Parks and Recreation. " We have found that not
everyone is using the same social media platform, and it can be difficult to stay
current with the trends. In addition, due to the social media sites' algorithms, our
posts are not always shown in everyone's newsfeeds. We are able to achieve a more
consistent result with the email marketing campaigns. "
Nicole Garvis, marketing/technical coordinator for Deer Park (Texas) Parks and
Recreation, agrees. " I have had extreme
success with email marketing due to email
automation. I am able to get messages out
to the right people at the right time without
considerable time and effort. Email automation has allowed me to craft comprehensive

campaigns and ensure that my messages
get where they belong. I can better track my
email success, monitor my leads and continually refine my process for the long term. "
Indeed, three separate studies released
in 2016 - one by the marketing consulting firm Clutch, another by the email
marketing firm Campaign Monitor and

Some of the most sophisticated email marketing solutions rely on artificial
intelligence analysis from super computers like IBM's Watson.
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the 10th annual Email Marketing Industry Census produced by Econsultancy in
partnership with email marketing service
provider Adestra - seem to confirm that
email marketing still has the highest ROI
of any marketing channel:
* Eighty-three percent of the companies Clutch surveyed said they were
using e-newsletters to make new sales,
and more than 70 percent were using
stand-alone and follow-up emails to
nurture nibbles of interest from customers (http://bit.ly/2dZholN).
* The Campaign Monitor study found that
businesses can expect a $38 return for every dollar they invest in email marketing.
* Researchers in the Econsultancy-Adestra study found that 73 percent of the
more than 1,100 marketers interviewed
said email was their No. 1 marketing
channel in terms of ROI. According to
Adestra CEO Henry Hyder-Smith, the
study " points out that companies investing at least a fifth of their marketing
budgets on email are eight times more
likely to see sales attributable to it in excess of 50 percent. "
The Reason Behind Email's Potency
Despite the buzz over social media, 58
percent of internet users say the first
thing they check on their computerized
device each morning is email, according
to an Exact Target study (http://tinyurl.
com/lr8m6sv). " Here's the truth, " says
Derek Halpern, owner of Social Triggers. " When you have someone's email,
you're allowed to communicate with
them when you want, how you want. "
Halpern recently conducted his own
informal test, pitting email against Twitter. On Twitter, he posted a link that he
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