December 2008

2009: The year to focus on marketing relevance
While senior marketers embrace the idea of delivering relevant marketing messages, their challenge remains how to do it most effectively. Here are five actionable items that will ensure your e-mail marketing messages are consistently relevant. By Chris Carder

Recently, I led a roundtable about developing effective e-mail strategies with some of Canada’s leading marketers. The lively discussion revealed that these professionals, regardless of what media they are most comfortable using, are increasingly committed to ensuring their marketing messages are relevant. This is a positive and dramatic development given that just a few years ago, the predominant concern had been about chasing the “perfect e-mail frequency”.

“…in 2009, smart marketers will focus their efforts on enhancing ways to capture better data, along with focusing on delivering consistently pertinent content.”

E-mail marketing, whose prominence in the marketing mix has steadily increased over the last few years, has been at the forefront of delivering relevant messages. In part, that’s because as far back as 2005, research overwhelmingly demonstrated that sending relevant e-mails leads to dramatic improvements in revenues and net profits. At the same time, e-mail marketing has had to effectively anticipate and successfully meet customers’ needs because recipients can easily unsubscribe when messages are irrelevant.

The challenge
The challenge for the increasingly digitally savvy marketer – across all industries and levels of seniority – is how to ensure their messages are consistently relevant. To assist marketers in cost-effectively generating and sustaining relevant e-mail marketing content – and thereby truly make 2009 the year of marketing relevance – here are five critical elements that all marketing managers, directors and vice-presidents need to consider when developing their e-mail campaigns:

1. Leverage larger data-sets
According to recent research, 70% of e-mail users actually have more than one e-mail account. Typically, that means one e-mail address accessed at work and at least one active address used at home. It will become increasingly important that marketers’ databases be able to capture multiple e-mail addresses for each customer and flag them accordingly. This presents a wonderful opportunity to capture an audience’s attention more frequently and within the context of where the e-mail recipient is reading your communications.

2. Design for various technologies
With the proliferation of smart phones, netbooks and other hand-held devices, e-mail is not only being accessed in different locations, it is being viewed on technologies that render content dramatically differently than when viewed on traditional desktop or laptop computer screens. Therefore, in order to be most relevant, e-mail content needs to be tailored to the limitations and unique capabilities of these mobile technologies.

3. Tap into social networks
E-mail has always been social. In fact, according to a recent Ipsos Reid study, e-mail remains the most popular and preferred form of online communications. At the same time, however, there is a new demographic segment that is increasingly using established online social networks to complement how and why they use e-mail. For this group, user-generated content (e.g. product reviews) plays an important role in shaping perception and making purchase decisions. As a result, developing relevant messages for this segment involves tapping into (i.e. listening to and influencing) communities.

4. Personalize messages with dynamic content
The more you interact with customers and prospects, the more they come to equate relevance with personalization. A 2008 Aberdeen Group study found that 96% of surveyed companies believe that e-mail personalization improves marketing performance. However, fewer than 40% actually take advantage of its full potential. That presents a tremendous competitive advantage for marketers who introduce personalization by delivering offers that vary according to criteria such as lifetime customer value, previous purchase behaviours and stage in the purchase cycle.

To create and sustain personalized messages, leading companies are now adopting “dynamic content” i.e., e-mail that automatically configures and customizes components to suit each e-mail recipient or audience segment – in order to achieve the rapidly growing expectation of personalized and relevant messages.

5. Use metrics
One of the reasons why e-mail has grown in prominence as an essential business tool is the ease and speed at which e-mail campaign successes can be measured. Today, e-mail metrics have become sophisticated enough to identify specific response actions that allow us to determine individual level of engagement. Some of the metrics that help you hone the relevance of your e-mail messages include: the number of unsubscribes over a period of time, the times that e-mails are re-visited and, ultimately, conversion rates.

Given the dramatic lift in business results that accompany delivering relevant content and the increased pressures to deliver substantial and quantitative results, in 2009, smart marketers will focus their efforts on enhancing ways to capture better data along with focusing on delivering consistently pertinent content.

Chris Carder is president of e-mail service provider ThinData, a Transcontinental Company (www.thindata.com), a leading authority and supplier of e-mail marketing technology, strategy and creative services. He can be reached at president@thindata.com.