Email Marketing – Where are we now, and where are we going in 2010?
Firstly, hello!
For those of you that don’t know me, I’m an email marketing specialist from London, England. I’m also consulting businesses on mobile and online innovation, social media, and how these can be combined with email to produce great campaigns… hence the name, Innovative Email.
In a nutshell, I think in 2010 we will finally see the end of generic, single-minded and poorly targeted email. This is otherwise known as ‘tonnage email’. Marketing Directors are beginning to understand now, that just because email is very quick and low-cost doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable to blast their entire database with a single generic offer. Let’s say we all work at an electronic retailer in the online marketing team, and our MD says “trading is down, and the TV department is way off target. I want you to send an email to everyone with our best TV offer”. We all still hear things like this, but much less frequently, thank God.
What is the use in sending a prospect an email with a TV offer, if they have been clicking on Sat-nav links in your last email? What if that customer bought a TV from you in the last 12 months? Shouldn’t you be trying to cross-sell rather than sell them another TV? Better still, what if they’ve been searching for a camera on your website? Surely it would be better to acknowledge this and use those analytics to yours and your customer’s benefit? Consumers are starting to understand and expect to be contacted personally and with relevance. They expect companies to get to know them as an individual.
I bought an external hard drive from a popular online electronics company in November. They frequently send me email offers, but you would have thought that they would have at least excluded me from this mailing in late December:
- Poor targeting my friend
Companies that fail to learn about their prospects and customers, and carefully use this priceless information will fall behind in 2010.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Garry Aylott, Philip Storey. Philip Storey said: Check out my blog post on #email #marketing – Where are we now, and where are we going in 2010 http://tinyurl.com/ya9jz4t [...]
I hope that you are right and that these tonnage emails stop – they have so annoyed me in the past, and currently! But I doubt we are going to see a huge change this year – too many companies are either in a desperate state and so are just going to fling any old thing into the ether!
I also wonder if maybe there are still a few too many Marketing Managers and maybe Online Managers who think that the number of emails sent and read is the only marker and the suggestion of targeted emails goes outside of their comfort factor.
A pity but I don’t think 2010 will be the year – though it so definitely needs to be!!
Aaah, but you forget. CRM systems cost money. Smarter email management apps cost money. Email on its own is virtually free!
The reason it’s outside of most marketing people’s comfort zone is that typically doing a project like that involved some IT understanding and skill. It’s very rare you’ll find that in Marketing
DJ
[...] week, i wrote an article titled “Email Marketing, where are we now and where are we going in 2010?” and I received quite a few comments, emails, tweets etc that had a recurring theme – It all [...]