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Last month, The Industry Measure (IM) released its 23rd twice-yearly survey of the creative markets, and with it, the results on creatives' top perceived sales opportunities. This month, I want to talk about one opportunity in particular—e-mail.
According to IM Design & Production (D&P) #23, 22 percent of creative firms (defined as ad agencies, graphic designers, corporate designers, and photographers) see "e-mail campaign design, development" as a top sales opportunity, the second highest level for this category in the IM D&P surveys.
The challenge is that e-mail marketing is the kind of task that is increasingly insourced by customers, and, for smaller businesses, accomplished easily and inexpensively using online management services like Constant Contact. Thus, while e-mail campaigns are growing in importance to creative and marketing services firms, customers are increasingly going the low-cost, "do it yourself" route.
Should these firms let their e-mail services get away? Should they let them go the way of prepress and design? After all, Constant Contact starts at $15 per month. At that price, why bother?
All About Attention
It does not make any sense to try to compete with what has become a commoditized solution, and for some customers, in-house, template-based solutions meet their needs just fine. But there is a category of customers taking e-mail campaigns in-house that shouldn't be. Savvy creative and marketing services firms should be on the lookout for these opportunities, both for the sake of their clients and their own bottom lines.
There are two major factors that they should talk to their clients about before clients take these projects in-house. First (at least at present), such solutions offer no personalization beyond the most simplistic levels. For some businesses, depending on their client base and product or services mix, this is not a major problem. But for others, the need to move from static to relevance-based personalization is becoming critical.
Every day, people open their inboxes to find dozens, even hundreds, of new e-mails. Those not directly relevant to them, even if they come from companies they know and do business with, often do not get opened. That is why e-mail, perhaps even more than print, needs to catch the recipient's attention right away. Recipients must immediately recognize it as coming from a company they know and like, and they must have time to read it. Or they must recognize it as coming from a company they know and like and, because the communications are personalized, open it because they know it is likely to be relevant to their needs. Or they recognize the e-mail as being relevant because it was preceded by some other kind of communication, such as a printed mailer.
The first can be achieved by using templates, but the other two cannot. There is only so much that out-of-the-box solutions can do, and that is where creatives and others need to step in and let clients know the value they provide. That value often comes when e-mail is paired with other media.
Multi-channel Campaigns
Certainly, in today's increasingly complex marketing environment, one of the undisputable facts is that marketing is becoming increasingly multi-channel or "cross media." When used alone, each medium or channel, regardless of what it is, is not as effective as it once was.
To make multi-channel campaigns effective, it is necessary, not just to touch the customer with multiple media, but for those touches to be part of an integrated strategy. For this to happen, customers cannot be renegades. Cross-channel marketing efforts must be carefully—and professionally—coordinated.
Say a customer is sending out e-mail promotions, announcing a new product to existing customers. Simple e-mail blasts will have a certain measure of effectiveness in this situation. But what if their customer base is diverse and the database is undifferentiated? How do you convince this vast group of people that, considering the avalanche of e-mail they received that day, the contents of this particular one might—might—relate to them? Or what if the company wants to expand its database and contact potential new customers, recipients who might be unfamiliar with the company? How do you get them to select that e-mail out of the pile?
Then there are other issues. What if the client wants to boost response rates? How many times is it safe to blast to your customer list on the same topic? What about the larger issue of list fatigue?
Combining media can create a synergistic effect that cannot be achieved by a single medium alone. But consistency and branding are critical. The components need to look like they are part of a coordinated campaign, rather than a haphazard effort. Professional judgment calls can make or break the campaign. It's all about timing, coordination, and message. The components need to build on one another in a systematic fashion.
Whether you are a creative firm or a printer, it is important to stem the tide of services going to customers' desktops. Not just to preserve revenue, but to preserve the position of your creative agency or print shop in the eyes of the customer.
Heidi Tolliver-Nigro is an industry writer, an analyst specializing in digital workflow and technologies. Her e-mail address is htollvr@aol.com.
author: By Heidi Tolliver Nigro