I appreciate the comments from Jim at Rarebird. This is a great firm and they do wonderful work with email and other interactive tools. The thought in his comment is that email is abused because it is too easy.
I’ll argue that it is abused because it is too hard.
The problem I’m describing is when Good Marketers blast, don’t segment, don’t use dynamic content….in general they don’t make their messages relevant to the individual recipient.
I'm not necessarily talking about the SPAMMER, or the local dry-cleaner (although they at least have great data)
This is a problem of ease of use. If your tools are not easy enough…if there is too much pain and friction associated with good marketing, you are not going to do it.
Think about the process you need to go through to integrate your data, build content rules….in general ‘execute’ on a really good campaign. This has historically required input from no only creative, but also IT and programmers. What happens when you want to change a rule? Back to IT. Lost time, money....and momentum.
However, if it is easy you are more inclined to push the envelope, test, experiment and focus on what really works to accomplish your goals.
I’ll let out a little chunk of information that we will be reporting from one of our major retail clients. (As I mentioned in my posting over the weekend, this subject will be explored in detail in an upcoming whitepaper)
Of the things influencing the success of their emails they ranked four in the following order:
#1 Recency. How recent was their last interaction drives future interaction.
#1 Relevancy. This is what one to one marketing is all about.
#3 Frequency. Response is influenced by how frequently you email
#4 Creative/Offer.
Of the things that influence success, the most important have to do with talking to people like you know them. What stand between you and your customers? It’s not desire….it’s Technology.
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