Within an hour, Red Sox/MLB show power of email marketing

Quick..timely...direct. That is what email is all about.

Less than an hour after the Boston Red Sox’ Jason Bay slid across home plate to help his team advance in the playoffs, fans had an email in their inboxes with all of the details and plugs to buy merchandise.

Take that, traditional advertising.

As I continue to read more and more about why email is dying, it’s instances like the one above that cement what myself and other email marketers believe about this business. You can’t get a quick turnaround like this in traditional newspaper, radio and TV. Within an hour, the Sox (via MLB, who for some bizarre reason, manages every team’s campaigns) had reached out to their fanbase, picking up on their emotion and perhaps turning them into merchandise dollars. A finely-crafted email can do that: play to people’s emotions and create business as a result. Why wait to put together a print ad that won’t give you any information of who’s looking at it and what reaction they have?

Having said all this, MLB still continues to operate with a giant FAIL stamp with the heavy images and lack of individual stylings. One step at a time, I guess.