Marketing as Technology

I just finished the best book since “The Innovators Solution”. It’s called “Running Money” by Andy Kessler.

Although billed as more of a financial story, it is really the story of technology and a funny; albeit cynical look at the period we just came through in the past 6 years or so.

Two things I loved about this book, aside from Andy’s writing style, was the education about the industry we are in and more importantly what this means to all of our lives. Technology has always been about freeing peoples minds to focus on more creative and intellectual pursuits. 350 years ago when all we could do was focus on getting food and shelter civilization didn’t move too far forward. Add some technology (steam engine) and look at the amazing progress in just the past 100 years.

What doe this have to do with Email Marketing? Everything.

To date we have all been bad marketers because of obstacles standing in our way. Those obstacles were the many steps and people necessary to get marketing done. All of our energy was spent on Marketing Execution. Since Marketing Execution was so hard, time consuming and expensive….we just didn’t have the brain time necessary to be good marketers.

With tools like Email Marketing, the most important criteria is now ease of use. If you can get sophisticated (automated) tools into the hands of the end user you eliminate the pain associated with Marketing Execution and focus on the actual Marketing.

That facilitates a ton of change. Marketing is now faster, more relevant, less expensive and by definition more valuable.

I’m working on a whitepaper on this topic where I’ll explore this in a lot more detail. I welcome your thoughts in the meantime.

Comments

[Jim Cota]

Ah, interesting timing. My last blog included this paragraph:

"One of the primary benefits of e-mail is also one of its chief problems: it's too easy. Because it's so easy to create and send a message, the creators don't spend enough time sweating the details. Far more than the subject line, we need to be concerned with the content and copy, headlines, the images used, the emotion of the piece. I think people forget that the final product will be a marketing message designed to communicate something about your product and company. The same care and caution that goes into crafting other marketing messages should be (but - sadly – often isn't) apparent."

So, while I think your main point is right on target, I can't help but think-- like Dr. Frankenstein-- we've created a monster. Simply removing the barriers to communication doesn't remove the onus to spend time and effort thinking about and executing the message.

Looking forward to the whitepaper -- and perhaps taking you to task on it! :)
/Jim