The best thing you can give yourself and your company for the holidays is the gift of practical segmentation – a gift that keeps on giving, especially when it comes to profits in a tough market.
In the current economic climate, the shrewd email marketer has an opportunity to be the hero who helps the business stay afloat and even thrive. While many email marketers long to be able to segment their lists into thousands of mini-segments to conduct true one-to-one marketing, now is the time to stop dreaming and get practical.
In my iTiki bylines I give advice on such topics as:
Practical segmentation means a better bottom line for the holidays
Learn to say "No" - or at least "Wait" - to discounts
Thriving for the holidays mean putting on hold your dream of true one-to-one marketing
In my Catalog Success byline I give an overview of how this is the time for email marketers to act like a sharp businessperson and consolidate their own standing in the process. I give practical tips on metrics, segmentation and talking the higher level biz talk.
One of email's assets - it is a cheap channel - can also be a trap that blocks email marketers from using real business metrics and employing savvy methodologies such as segmentation.
Now is the perfect time for email marketers to take their game up a few notches. In many companies, the email team is the only one hitting their numbers (or at least not taking as big of a hit as the rest of the channels). Email marketers can easily capitalize on their comparative success and increase the strategic importance of email in their companies. In some cases, where email has been off to the side, this will mean getting to sit at the adult, strategic table with the C-level team.
Email marketers apparently just love to lower their margins and leave money on the table.
The mania for discounts is driven to a large degree by the standard practice of blasting emails to every possible email address. When presented with a business downturn, the Pavlovian response is to blast out discounts. The more discounts the merrier - too bad, though, about the impact on the bottom-line.
In reality, customers are not the same. Some will buy from you without regular discounts, some will buy from you with minimal discounts and some will require on-going discounts.
The trick is how to figure out who requires what. For decades in the offline world, marketers used Recency, Frequency and Monetary value (RFM) segmentation to resolve this issue. RFM can be used only even more effectively because it can be automated.
One of our customers decreased the amount of discounts they give out by 40% within a few months and was able to delay offering Holiday discounts by 6 weeks. How? Simple, they used RFM to segment the customers and give discounts to sale shoppers but not to their most engaged customers who are more interested in being first in line for the latest trend.
How will this play out for you? Well, you won’t know until the next time you feel the urge to blast and you just say - "No! I'm going to be a smart business person instead."
Much of what is presented as thought leadership in this industry is 5 or more years behind the times. This sad state of affairs is something I witness on a regular basis but one of the more egregious examples of it was at the shop.org show in Vegas last September.
An email marketing company was presenting the criteria they used to help a publication pick online retailers. However, the checklist was way, way behind the times. Need to have sign up on the home page. Email to people within a set period of time. Etc. It was the equivalent of selecting the top car manufactures by reviewing the following: + Four tires? Check + Turn the steering wheel and at least two tires move? Check + Windshield? Check
Email is often viewed as a commoditized product/service. To get online marketers to realize the enormous upside of doing things right, thought leadership needs to fast-forward at least 5 years and be just that – leadership.
Last time I wrote about my journey to the OMMA Behavioral conference in San Francisco and something that was M.I.A. – a discussion by vendors of BT's ROI. This time I take on something that was only mentioned in passing and something that happened to my car in the parking garage.
Something that was mentioned in passing
There was a legal point/counterpoint on the privacy and legal implications of Behavioral Targeting (BT). Each side expressed very strong opinions. Too little attention was paid to the fact that BT does not need to be a scary, black box to visitors of websites.
In the tech industry we love the next big thing; it is exciting, gives us jobs, and potentially makes us a lot of money. Most website visitors are not as inherently excited by the next big deal to come along, especially if it feels like an invasion of their privacy.
However, most people who go to websites want a convenient experience. They want relevant content and products. People, in general, want to have their lives made easier.
Companies pushing BT products and companies with websites using BT need to start educating the public on the win/win aspect of BT. Companies need to:
* Explain more clearly to the general public why using BT is in their self-interest
* Demystify and put BT technology in perspective by comparing it to what is known about the consumer in the offline world
* Explain clearly, concisely and truthfully what in the world BT is so that it isn’t a black box and imagined as being worse than it is
* Make sure that all their interactions with customers are such that most customers feels that they can trust the company
Something that happened to my car
Right along with buy low, sell high, I now hold as a truth – be careful when you park in the Union Square Garage. If you like shopping to replace items that were stolen, then park there without a concern in the world. If, on the other hand, you want to do something else with your time, take everything you can with you or have someone guard your car.
I went last week to the OMMA Behavioral conference in San Francisco. The conference was memorable primarily for three things: something vendors didn’t address, something that was only mentioned in passing, and something that happened to my car in the parking garage.
Something vendors didn’t address – ROI M.I.A.
The topic of the ROI of BT was conspicuously missing in action during vendor’s on stage conversations. Most potential corporate customers do not share the tech industries inherent love for the next big thing, especially if the next big thing is expensive, time consuming, hard to use, or simply not one of the things that wake them up at three in the morning. There is a lot of inbred enthusiasm at conferences about the wonders of what we are doing. After all, we are wonderful, so what we are doing must be wonderful! Case closed. Why doesn’t the rest of the world just get it?
Well, one of the main reasons they don’t “get it” or “buy it” is tech companies do a lousy job demonstrating an ROI and focusing on ROI. By not presenting the ROI the customer will receive, BT companies allow price to become more important than ROI. The lack of ROI, complete with specific case study examples, increases the odds that new technology will be placed in the “nice to have/maybe someday when we get around to it after we put out all our never ending fires” category.
Next time: Something that was only mentioned in passing, and something that happened to my car in the parking garage
My background involves over 15 years of successful marketing and sales of new B2B and B2C solutions including: enterprise SaaS analytics, games, education, B2C finance, Human Capital Management (HCM), workflow and advanced professional services. I have helped successfully scaled three start-ups and managed new groups for large companies. In general, I tend to go where no one has gone before as a trailblazer at the forefront of new markets.
