The Illusion of Communication

With the economy going in the direction that it has been going in recently (i.e., down), and everyone looking for ways to save money, email marketing has become more and more intriguing for more and more organizations. However, like many things “marketing,” I’ve seen many instances of email marketing being used in a tactical manner. By this, I mean that I’ve seen emails sent out in an attempt to ignite sales (10% off coupons, for example), or used as individual “islands” of communication that has no real foundation or basis of adding anything to the sales or marketing process. This is all well, but if you really want to get the most out of your email marketing, you’ll have to use some strategy!

To that end, I’ve created a flow chart that illustrates how I believe email marketing can (and should) be used. The thumbnail image to the right (which is a link to a larger version of the flow chart) takes you through the questions that I ask myself during the creation of an email marketing campaign or lead nurturing process.

Note that the process begins with “contact.” This contact can happen in any number of different ways, and is a subject of it’s own flow chart and is outside the scope of this particular process. However, the contact arrives, you can pick it up from there. Of course, there are better and worse ways of getting a contact, but this should be addressed by your overall marketing plan. And, ideally, you would have that information or knowledge available as you set up your email marketing campaign. If not, create your overall marketing plan, then plug this in at the appropriate place.

This flowchart is, admittedly, a first draft, my first crack at actually drawing my thinking process. I’m not sure that I’ve 100% accurately portrayed everything, and I did intentionally make things vague and high-level to make it generic enough to plug into any situation. If you have any questions or ideas to add to this, please add a comment. I’d love to see how everyone is interpreting this information. And if you have a success (or horror) story about an email marketing campaign that you’ve run, please tell us about that too!

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If you want to keep and maintain relationships with your prospects and customers (and who doesn’t), the best place to start is with proper introductions. Here’s an example of what NOT to do. According to a recent story in CIO Magazine:

Emailappenders, an organization that sells e-mail lists and has offices in the U.S. and the U.K, sold Javelin Marketing, a company based in Concord, California, a list of more than 100,000 e-mail addresses for people who had opted in to receive marketing material. The deal went sour when Javelin used the list for a marketing campaign. Javelin’s marketing director, Bob Richards, said that nearly 85 percent of the e-mail bounced, which he maintains indicates that most of the list was rubbish. He’s seeking a refund for the US$14,000 Javelin spent.

In the above story, email addresses were obtained through third-party systems. The ultimate recipient of the email didn’t know the sender and the likelihood that the recipient will be interested in what’s offered is slim (and in this case, the chances the the email addresses working were equally bad!). This is just one of the many reasons why list buying ultimately is a bad idea.

The moral of the story is this: Your organization can save a few bucks by growing email lists through healthier channels (i.e., not buying lists from third-party vendors) and, moreover, you have a much better chance at forming substantial business relationships with leads obtained through your own systems.

There are many ways to grow your list through the proper channels, one example being a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. By using a PPC campaign, you can forge a relationship BEFORE the visitor signs up for your email list. An interesting bit that may have been overlooked in the previous sentence: the visitor is signing up for your list, not being forced into it (like in the example story).

An example PPC process works like this: The visitor starts out by looking for something specific, something that ultimately you offer and decided to advertise on a search engine. When the visitor clicks on the link, it brings the visitor to your web site, which (if done well) should have a very targeted message that speaks to what this visitor was searching for. By the time the visitor gets to the point where he’s asked to sign up for your newsletter, the visitor will have a good idea that the content you’ll send will be useful, non-offensive information. And thus the beginnings of a healthy relationship are formed.

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We’ll deliver the punch-line first: If you want to create satisfied customers, then you must deliver real value to your customers. Okay, so this sounds cliche, obvious, and easy, but don’t be so quick to dismiss.

Keep in mind that the customers want what they want. Despite what some may think, marketing does not create markets. Moreover, marketing cannot create wants. Great organizations find existing wants and orient their offerings (and messaging) to those specific wants. The average organization delivers what they believe to be valuable, but ultimately misses it’s target. The more times you hear someone inside your own organization say “the customers just aren’t seeing the real value here,” think real hard about whether you are seeing your customers’ problems clearly.

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