I remember a couple weeks ago a heated discussion I had with a client with respect to EDMs.  I maintained, and I still maintained that EDMs do not work particularly well for FMCGs.  There simply is not enough for an FMCG to talk about (unless it’s serious about becoming a lifestyle brand) and the acquisition and long term maintenance of such a contact database is high.

This is not to say that EDMs are not useful marketing channels.  I have always maintained for high value and lead generation campaigns, EDMs from owned databases work extremely well.

However, I think in both situations, EDM effectiveness/efficacy will decline in huge ways with the birth of the Google Priority inbox.  Gmail will rank emails on the basis of how often mails from a sender are opened and replied to, which are both extremely low for EDMs.  It is already quite easy for consumers to ignore EDMs, and open rates are historically low (~1% IIRC).  Imagine how low they will be if they are always moved to the secondary box, separated from the “real emails.”

If I were a direct marketing or database marketing company, I would be concerned right about now.