As a ‘content marketer’ I often hear that I’m part of an emerging trend. Or a vague movement or a flash in the pan. It depends on who is speaking. I’ve never been trendy so I’m always flattered. However, I’m afraid that despite popular opinion, I’m not trendy and content marketing isn’t new. I think the industry might be suffering from a simple case of misclassification.

Social Media Today (SMT) did something fun with some statistics they received from a study by Smart Insights and Get Response. SMT made an infographic of ‘Email Marketing Excellence’ based on results from the Smart Insights/Get Response survey of 1800+ email marketing.

Here is the link to the infographic: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/state-email-marketing-2015-infographic?sthash.PiGMeiPZ.9EGUoUob.mjjo

Who can resist an infographic?

According to the survey, email marketing is the most ‘effective digital media channel’. Email marketing was rated more effective than SEO, social media and content marketing. Let’s read that one again because…I don’t get it.

My confusion originates from content marketing’s appearance on the list. If email marketing is an effective media channel, how can content marketing also appear on this list?

This is, in my opinion a common misconception and an area that requires clarification on the part of content marketers everywhere and here is why; email marketing is content marketing. Email marketing is a way of distributing content. Nobody is sending out blank emails just like nobody is posting blank updates in Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. All these channels require content and as such are a method of content marketing. On the flip side, content marketing relies on these methods of transportation, for a lack of a better term, to be a marketing method.

If email marketing, social marketing and even SEO rely on content, why does content marketing seem to be an emerging area for the marketing world with consultancies like mine popping up like cheap donuts at the fair? From my vantage point it is because of the quality and level of sophistication of the end consumer. Actually, there is more to this than sophistication. There is also the democratisation of information.

Consumers are prepared to take the content in an email seriously. If it gives them some kind of information that they require. If it has worth, entertainment or quality of any time, there is more a chance than any time in history that the audience will respond because information can come from anywhere.

So let’s rejig our perception of content marketing and see it as the umbrella term that it is and not a channel. Content marketing isn’t a highway. It is the sign by the side of the road.