My thanks to David Baker for his insightful brief ("Simplify Your E-mail Marketing Programs," Email Insider, 10/2/06, Media Post). His article is one of several we have been keeping in a binder for internal discussion. This particular entry owes a lot to his comments.
Here's a quote: ""Many of you have patched together teams of multiple vendors: one for the business brief, another for the creative brief, an agency to build the e-mail, and then a provider to deliver your precious cargo. As a result, many programs suffer from the complexity... leaving no time for applied learning."
Or, as I might say more generally in expanding on this topic: technique for the sake of technique often contributes to needless complications and distractions. Even perhaps to the formation of bad marketing ideas.
It so happens, e-mail marketing thrives on technique. It's part of the nature of the medium. However, as marketers we must be concerned with the habitual chasing of 'best practice du jour.' Many benefits of marketing take time to develop. The voice and personality, not to mention brand formation, takes time. It should not be baked and served too quickly. Not if you want to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.
In a world transifixed by technology, many marketers pursue short term gains at the expense of long term goals. It is common to see people chasing technique, when they should be re-asking basic questions along the way: what are we trying to do? What are we trying to share in this new space (e-mail) that will reinforce customer perception and branding? What is the goal of this particular campaign or e-mailing? What are the objectives we need to reach in meeting them? Why should the customer care?
Chasing returns is counter productive in the stock market. But what about the stock we place in the brands we trust? Is it not counter productive to chase too many short term gains? What if these gains end up diminishing how the customer perceives our product?
Too many trees may obscure the forest. Just because the analytics and reporting are built-in, doesn't mean you should live and die by them with such fervor in every e-mail. Relationship marketing is a carefully built process. To your customer or subscriber, the choices they make in opening your message, or in becoming "engaged" with it, may have little to do with the metrics of testing, which may better reflect the sender's obsession with tactics and instant gratification (test, test, test, with lots of measurement, too little strategy?).
Your customer does not live with technology in the same way you live with it. She is definitely not sharing the fixation on measurement. We must always remind ourselves that measurement is often part of a larger more subjective analysis. It may be ironic that testing obsessions can end up becoming symptomatic of a continual misuse of data.
Let me replay the five guidelines from David Baker (in paraphasing his originals):
1. Be clear about your goals and don't get confused between goals and objectives. They are not the same.
2. If there is not going to be a measurable value attached to your test results, why do it?
3. Test only what you will be able to act on. Why measure what you cannot change?
4. (Quoted verbatim from Baker's post): "Quantify response -- both in cost to attain and cost to manage. If you don't interpret this, it will be an empty open rate or click through rate."
5. Stick to a six-words in summarizing your reasons for each new campaign or tactic. If you can't say it simply, it may be too complex.
No comments:
Post a Comment