The Marketing Bureau

By Wendy Roth
First Published on www.imediaconnection.com  

What's keeping your email marketing program from performing as well as you want or expect? Email is the undisputed ROI heavyweight champion of the marketing world, but if you aren't seeing the same results other companies enjoy, or if your program isn't making its budget numbers, maybe it's because of the way you manage the email channel within your marketing program.

So often, the deployment staff shoulders the blame for sub-par email results. If the clicks, opens, conversions, or bottom-line results don't meet expectations, management writes off email as a failure and moves on.

But the people whose fingers hover over the "send" button don't always get to call the email shots. Maybe it's time to look for organizational or strategic weaknesses that put roadblocks in the path to progress.

Are you current with the new email environment?

Email marketing technologies and capabilities have improved immensely over the years, but many marketers are still not taking full advantage of these new abilities.

Many of the needed changes come at the deployment level: more use of segmentation and targeting, more reliable address acquisition, better message design, greater integration of email with web analytics and CRM, and a more subscriber-centric perspective -- with transparent subscribe and unsubscribe processes and more relevant content.

These changes won't happen without management buy-in. However, this is where you, as the chief marketing officer, email marketing manager, or head of digital marketing, need to step up.

You have many irons in the marketing fire, but email needs your attention now.

What your employees want from management

Do you have employees storming into your office, demanding more time and resources to make the email channel more productive? Not likely, because they're busy trying to get the next email campaign out the door.

If they had the time, though, this is probably what they'd say they want to see:

A broader vision for email in the corporation

Email isn't just an electronic catalog or repurposed print advertisement. Your messages often are the first contact new customers have with your company or brand.

Are you using email only to sell to them? Email can be so much more:

A virtual Welcome Wagon, where you introduce your company and its products, brands, and services

A roadmap to different departments

A calling card with all the ways someone could contact your company (postal, telephone, email, text message, RSS feed, fax numbers, customer support, corporate headquarters, etc.)

Related to that point, email can take the heat off your customer-support or call-center people. Set up an email program as the first step in answering questions or resolving problems.

If you want to use email just to drive sales, so be it. But don't just push the deal of the week or the latest discount.

Harness email's horsepower to cross-sell and up-sell your customers with messages that are much more relevant because they speak to the relationship your customers already have with you.

Dedication to training and education in more-sophisticated email techniques and giving employees time to learn

Having a broader vision of email's role isn't enough. You also need the technology and the employee knowledge and skill set to make that happen. Yes, it means spending money on new equipment or software, as well as training, but the ongoing improvements to your email results will be worth the initial investment.

Your employees most likely want to make the email program prove its worth. But if they're already doing two or three jobs just to get the message delivered on time, where will they get the time to learn new things?

This is my personal bias, because I manage training programs for my company's clients. I see firsthand how hungry employees are to learn new methods and master new applications to make email work better, but I also see many who are too busy just getting email campaigns out the door to learn new ways to do them better.

Although some budget resources might have to be reallocated to pay for upgraded software, new applications, or educational seminars and workshops, time is also an investment that can generate a measurable return.

Encouraging and recognizing employee efforts to optimize the email program

It takes more time to do email right: to collect better data, clean a list, segment that list, develop three or four alternate messages, test the messages, manage the deployment, and analyze results.

Do you encourage employees to spend time optimizing the email program along the entire spectrum from before the opt-in to after the opt-out? Or do you care only about how many sales the last campaign generated?

In some companies, the email department is one harried person who takes it upon him or herself to learn all he or she can about best practices, developments, and improvements in email marketing.

If your company reality is that you can't add staff, at least find a way to acknowledge the effort your employees are expending to make email better.

Can you reorganize the workflow or responsibilities? Shift the budget around to make room for a software upgrade or training time? You never know where a little creativity can end up generating a big, measurable benefit down the road.

These are just some of the areas where email needs leadership from the management suite as well as expertise from the deployment staff. Your time and attention is vital to keep email a strong asset in your marketing toolbox.

Wendy Roth is senior manager of training services for Lyris Inc.