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Satnam Singh is vice president of analytics at Enterprise Spectrum, an applied analytics firm based in Dallas.

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Why won’t email marketing grow up?

Written on
Nov 19, 2009 
Author
Satnam Singh  |
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Why won’t email marketing grow up?

cry_small.jpgADOTAS – Like a lot of things in life, email marketing used to be simple. It was only text; subscribers would read it mostly on their computers; it would create awareness of your brand/product and influence enough to make the program reasonably profitable.

Of course, some darn overachiever had to jump in and spoil all the fun by introducing HTML and adding images to emails. Hey, the discount didn’t look good in plain text but it certainly looked so much better in Helvetica that consumers started buying! (Yes, I have heard that!) Images, often rightfully stated, created an emotional connection that was difficult to convey in text.

But that’s when all hell broke loose. Emails became a smorgasbord of images – include enough of all possible combinations of product categories and link them to the website for consumer self-selection – that often borders on serving barbecue to a vegan. Look at any email from most of the major retailers (and a few CPG companies as well) even today and you will find this issue illustrated.

This behavior was understandable when marketers did not have the ability to relate the interactions from the email to the website, when the web had not developed largely into a sales channel and when there was little ability to customize your email on a one-to-one basis. Neither of these limitations exists today and yet, we won’t grow up to take advantage of the opportunities available to us.

Of course, I have an opinion on how this can be better! And mine’s based on data.

  1. Blast-it and Remember-it: Email campaigns are notorious for their “blast-it and forget-it” approach. There’s no reason not to store information on all links clicked upon by your customers and utilize them to build rules for what your customers prefer and serve them content appropriately. You may not know the why (we’ll discuss that next) but that’s OK. There’s considerable value that you will generate simply by starting to offer more products related to the links clicked on by the customers and removing links to other products. And it makes for a great feel-good factor – maybe enough good to do a James Brown rendition.
  2. Break the Walls Down: Emails are no longer the end of your conversation with the customer; they are a conduit to the website, the call center or the retail store. However, too often, I see emails being built without any cognizance of the customer interaction with these channels or the current promotions happening in them. The result, an email that is creatively blessed but is incongruent with everything else and adds to customer confusion. My suggestion, first bring together the list of customer experiences and current promotions across the different channels. Then craft your email to piggyback on the positive aspects of both of these. Apple, for example, mentions their in-store specialists who can help customers choose products.
  3. Beyond the Email Opens and Clicks: Opens and clicks aren’t enough anymore to judge the success of an email campaign when the resulting customer interaction is much broader. Ask yourself the basic question, “What is this email trying to achieve?” and set KPIs in accordance with the answers (or further questions) that come to mind. For example, the goal of a newsletter may be to drive people to the website to get up to speed on the various self-service and support options available online. In this case, you should also monitor the number of unique visitors to the page, the time spent on the page (longer is not necessarily better), number of support articles viewed/downloaded, number of service requests opened online, etc. This is also where you start finding out about the “why” along with the “what” through surveys and other avenues for customer feedback. Pick enough from each segment of adoring fans, passers-by and the inactive to get their thoughts on what they like, their preferences in timing, style, etc, including feedback on your current emails.

One last thing, there’s no growth without some pain and learning from mistakes. But the fun part is succeeding, having the bruises to show for it and walking around like the quintessential tough guy, Clint Eastwood. Now, how you phrase the “Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?” is up to you.





Reader Comments.

I agree that not enough email marketing campaigns out there today online are well targeted to their particular audience. The best advice in this article is to find out the information suggested, such as why certain visitors are clicking and what they are clicking for!

Posted by Johan Rijk | 4:25 pm on November 20, 2009.

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