The answer is 42

I continually run into companies that don’t really have a goal or understanding of their email marketing program. They’ve never really asked questions about how they’re using email or even why email is the right answer. Lots of companies are also diving head first into email marketing or the social media craze without having thought about what their goals are and what they want to happen.
What regularly ends up happening to companies that jump in without a clear goal is they get into a situation where their delivery is bad. Then they read a lot of best practice advice on the net and try to implement all of it. Sometimes that works, but other times it doesn’t. Finally they hire me or another consultant to help them sort out where it all went pear shaped.
My consulting isn’t about rote recitation of common best practices. Instead, I want to know about a client’s business and what they think about email.  The most frequent question I ask clients is: How does email fit into your business? What are your goals for your business? What is your value proposition?
Some of my clients can’t answer these question. They just tell me they want to use email and they don’t know what they’re doing and that’s why they hired me. Well, I can help them successfully send email, but I can’t help them decide what role email plays in their business. Those are the decisions my client needs to make. I can’t set their business goals for them.
When was the last time you actually sat down and just thought about your business goals? I know that sometimes it’s hard to find the time to look at your business and where it’s going. “Think about it? I’m too busy doing it!” But every business person needs to look at their business goals.
Once you’ve thought about your goals, think about your email marketing program. Is email helping you to reach those goals? How?
If you’ve reached your current business goals, what are your next ones? And how does email fit into those goals?
Sure, having an answer is good, but are you actually asking the right question?

Related Posts

Customers want to get mail from us!

Many online retailers assume that anyone making a purchase from them is a prime target for email marketing. THEY ARE OUR CUSTOMERS! Of course they want to get mail from us!
Well. Maybe. But not always. Think about the person who shops online during the holidays. I visit a lot of places looking for gifts for other people. These aren’t places I’d normally shop for myself, and are not places that have things I’m interested in. This means I don’t really have, or want, an ongoing relationship with them.
So for those of you that think they’ve found a new customer because I made a purchase this Christmas, I’d just like to say: Not so much. I mean, yeah, you have the perfect gift for my mother this year. Or that appropriately tacky bit of Vette swag for my dad. But, really, I just want to buy the gift and have it shipped. I don’t want an ongoing customer relationship with you. In fact, I really never want to hear from you again.
Some online retailers are polite and treat purchasers with respect. They allow guest checkouts and don’t require tons of personal information and account creation for a purchase. They even let you opt-out of being added to their mailing list at the time of purchase. Other retailers require the full registration process (you need to know my marital status? so I can buy a gift for my dad? what?) and don’t offer an opt-out during the checkout process. Instead, you infer I want your mail and make me opt-out after the fact.
Making a purchase doesn’t constitute permission. Sometimes retailers can get away with it because when I’m making a purchase for me I might be interested in more mail from you. When I’m making a purchase for someone else, though, there is no long term relationship to be developed.
Sure, with the right campaign you may be able to convert one of those purchasers into a returning purchaser. But without a carefully planned and executed conversion campaign you may lose more future customers than you convert.

Read More

Standing in the stadium

If you distill marketing down to its very essence what you find is everyone battling for a targets attention. Everything marketers do is to get “mindshare” or, in normal people terms, attention. The goal is to get people to remember your product over all the other products out there.
Many email marketers seem to think that increasing the frequency of mail is the most successful way to get attention from their recipients. What would happen, then, if every email marketer started sending more email? Would this really get more attention from recipients?
I don’t think so.
Increasing mail frequency is like standing up to see better in a stadium. One person stands up (increases frequency) and that person sees better than they did before. But if everyone stands up (increases frequency), then everyone is back to where they were and everyone is back to not being able to see.

Read More

FBox: The sky isn't falling

Having listened to the Facebook announcement this morning, I am even more convinced that emailpocalypse isn’t happening.
Look, despite the fact that companies like Blue Sky Factory think that this means marketers are NEVER EVER going see the inside of an inbox again this isn’t the end of email marketing.
Yes, Facebook email is a messaging platform that marketers are not going to have direct, unlimited and unfettered access to. I have no problem with this. Unfettered access to a messaging platform has been abused by marketers long enough, that I heartily approve of a platform that gives real control back to the recipient.
With that being said, there are a couple blindingly obvious ways to avoid having to give users control of their own inbox.

Read More