Poor data and a lack of strategy are two of the biggest obstacles in email marketing. Parry Malm, account director at Adestra, suggests ways to overcome these hurdles
Systemic shortfalls of marketing ecosystems are holding back digital marketers, according to recent research by Adestra. Fifty five per cent of marketers say the biggest barrier to effective use of email is lack of quality data (49 per cent say lack of segmentation). In such a data-driven discipline, this lack of confidence is worrying, especially as only 52 per cent regularly clean their data and 16 per cent either don’t know who’s opting in, or use neither opt-in or opt-out – key reasons for deliverability problems.
The second biggest barrier is lack of strategy (52 per cent say this) – without a clear strategic plan in place, it’s no surprise that objectives and outcomes are compromised. Email marketing is not a siloed marketing channel, therefore strategic integration with cross-channel marketing activities is key to improving results and supercharging ROI.
So how can you address these major obstacles to email marketing?
1. Data
Most companies do not have a co-ordinated data strategy or data collection policy. For example, a brand with multiple websites often has different collection policies for each, which means data is collected from different places and you end up with ‘variations of the truth’. In addition, companies tend to rely on existing data and not new data. Churn rates of existing lists can be quite high, as people change jobs, so lists need constant cleansing and data building.
The top five tips to improve your data are:
• Reactivate lapsed readers. If a contact hasn’t opened your email in six months, chances are they won’t unless you intelligently target their apathy.
• Do not harvest emails. Too many people augment their lists with emails found on websites, for example. This will hurt your sender reputation and infuriate your prospects.
• Enter new leads into an automated nurturing programme. Upon ingestion of new data, don’t start hard selling immediately – gradually introduce people to your brands, products and voices.
• Contact hard bounces via other channels. If 15 per cent of your email list are hard bouncing then call them up to get new details.
• Capture new data from everywhere (SMS, social media, offline advertising), encourage people into your list first and then focus on selling to them.
2. Strategy
Marketers tend to be so focused on short-term tactics, they can neglect the longer term view. Especially with the economic downturn reducing and stretching budgets, marketers may lose the bigger picture. However, with a cohesive strategy in place and planned proactive activity, instead of reactive short-term gains, you will enjoy better long-term ROI.
As well as constant testing and measurement, the focus must be on improvement for your email marketing operation. The top five tips to improve your strategy are:
• Don’t put email in a silo. Link in email touch points with those of other channels to gain successful synergies.
• Set your email KPIs and constantly measure results. Never be satisfied with the status quo – if you aren’t improving, you’re getting worse.
• Create a culture of continuous improvement. Make sure you are always testing, measuring, and ploughing forward with the results.
• Target recipients on email results.Strictly looking at email ROI doesn’t give the full picture – avoid list saturation by targeting recipients on conversions, clicks, opens or KPIs.
• Measure email results – across communication type, not just brand.
3. Disconnected systems
Another area of data concern is around integrating email with other business systems – critical to unlock the data (and aim for single customer view). Yet the biggest integration barrier is ‘disconnected systems’ – it’s been top for five years, yet marketers say it’s now even more of a stumbling block for companies in 2011. And this is only set to become worse as channels such as social media become another disconnected system.
So what is the best approach for businesses wanting to address their integration issues?
• Determine what information you need, where you need it, and how often it needs to be updated. While it is possible to house every single data point, will marketers actually use it all?
• Find out what level of interoperability your various platforms have. Can your CRM easily ‘speak’ to your finance system, your email marketing system and your web analytics package?
• Spec out your workflow and test it against all theoretical cases. Run this by all stakeholders and make your integration watertight against externalities.
• Ensure your solution is futureproofed for future system enhancements. While the integration may work now, how will it work if your finance team moves to a new payment platform in six months time?
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