‘Strategic email marketing is a waste of time. At least, that’s what my tutors say.’
I was speaking to a mature student on a business studies course. And my reaction? Well, I couldn’t help laughing.
‘Is it possible,’ I asked, ‘that they’re a bit behind the times?’
She nodded. ‘I think academics often are.’
I think so, too – witness my earlier article about the current state of (sophisticated) strategic email marketing in the US and in the UK. From authoritative sources.
But I do have an idea what the problem is.
Shiny things (and why strategic email marketing isn’t shiny)
Creative people – imaginative people – are constantly tempted by what we might call ‘shiny things’.
And there’s nothing shinier or more appealing than social media. In the last few years Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now Google+ have created a huge digital playground full of fun things to do, and fun places to do them.
If you want to, you can spend your whole life in front of a screen, under the pleasant delusion that you’re working. Or communicating. Or marketing.
Sometimes, of course, you are. But unless you’re a very organised person indeed, much of the time you’re not.
Mind you, pretty much the same could be said of any marketing activity. Witness those amazing, creative TV ads that linger in the memory for decades. The only problem being that we can’t, for the life of us, remember what it was they were advertising…
By comparison, strategic email marketing is plain old hard work.
You have to write the copy. Which means thinking very hard about who you are writing for. What they want. What they think. What you want them to think. And – most importantly – what you want them to do.
You have to design the email. Which means battling with about 40 different email browsers, all determined to mess up your beautiful layout. And all in different ways…
You have to manage the database. Which is tricky if your latest assistant has just done a quick sortout so the names on your list no longer match up to their actual email addresses.
And then you have to send it. Which you usually do just before you discover that all your images have duff links, meaning that when they appear at all they show as empty white boxes.
OK, it’s no fun. But it works.
And the evidence is out there – for all to see.
So when it comes to strategic email marketing – why not get someone else to do all the hard work?
Because there’s plenty of help available. Including, of course, ours…