I've worked closely with a few jewelers who didn't know anything about their own email list. These are jewelers who had newsletter signup boxes on their website but newsletters were never being sent out.
In most cases I found out that either the employee who set up their email newsletter accounts no longer work there, or they canceled the email marketing service. The store owner never saw a value in the email newsletter list but instead of removing it from the website, they just let it sit there.
Those I spoke to said they would figure it out eventually, but in the mean time they were still paying for the monthly subscription fee.
For my own ongoing research, I've lost track of the number of email lists I've signed up for. I fill out every email form I see, which is probably between 5 to 10 new lists per week.
Honestly, most of the times I never receive a confirmation email, and I never receive a solicitation. There are a lot of websites out there with misleading signup forms.
On the other had I do keep track of the number of jewelers who send me confirmation emails but then nothing ever again.
20.5% of those who sent me an automated confirmation email never sent me another email. I'm talking about automated emails from Constant Contact, iCOntact, Aweber, GoDaddy, etc. These are paid services, which means those jewelers are throwing away between $10 to $30 per month on an email program they never use.
To put it differently, 1 in 5 jewelers is spending money for a service they never use.
If you believe that email and Newsletter marketing is ineffective then you need to shake that belief off. Microsoft published a report showing that they measured a full 50% of all email traffic is a newsletter or deal of some type.
Consider that even though users are spending so much time on social networks, and direct messaging through other services, they still want those special offers sent to them.
The new generation of consumers doesn't clip coupons; instead they pick and choose which ones they want sent to them via email. And even then, they probably save those emails on their smartphone instead of printing them.
