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The 4 P's of Email Marketing
By Stefan Eyram, Connectus
Anyone who has ever studied marketing is aware of the “4 Ps” – Product, Place, Promotion and Price. But did you know that email marketing also has its own 4 Ps – Permission, Privacy, Profiling and Personalization?
Email is arguably the fastest growing marketing tool available to top marketers today. More than two-thirds of them use email marketing in one form or another. And while many marketers concede that their budgets are dwindling, they will admit that they plan to spend substantially more on email marketing in the coming year. Why?
The reasons for email’s fast rising popularity are varied. Many see it as an efficient and cost effective tool in an era of tight budgets. Overall, it costs considerably less than traditional methods while consistently generating better response rates. Furthermore, email can be tracked at every stage of a marketing campaign. Research also indicates that recipients prefer email over direct mail and other marketing vehicles when it is permission-based.
Permission
Permission is the real key to successful email marketing. If you don’t have explicit permission to send an email to a recipient you are SPAMMING them – sending unsolicited commercial email. Most email marketers do not SPAM. In fact, the majority of North American jurisdictions are enacting or developing specific privacy and permission laws to address issues like SPAM.
But is “email permission” what you are really looking for? Some lawmakers are considering permission and privacy laws that include ALL forms of marketing from direct mail to telemarketing. As an example, in the Canadian province of Ontario the government is proposing detailed privacy and personal information legislation that will require all marketers to get permission BEFORE they collect personal information. Marketers will also have indicate to the consumer, how they plan to use this personal information and what mechanism they have in place for consumers to reject this request if they wish. In effect, marketers will be required to receive “marketing permission.” And, if they don’t, fines could run as high as $100,000 per violation.
So what is likely to happen when dozens, perhaps hundreds of marketers converge on the same consumer for their marketing permission. My guess is that email marketing fatigue will set in that will lead ultimately to mass consumer rejection. So, why wait for the legislators? Those who take the high road and receive permission now will reap in the financial rewards later.
Privacy
In the past, many email marketers have bundled the privacy issue together with permission. While both are related, they are in fact very different. Permission as we have noted is a request to receive personal information and an invitation to market products or services to individual consumers. Privacy on the other hand, is what email marketers do with the personal information once they receive it and how they keep it private from prying eyes. With identity theft increasing and the average person more concerned about privacy issues, those organizations that consistently take the privacy high road will endear themselves to customers.
Every company that markets products and services should develop a clear, concise and easy-to-read Privacy Policy and then implement it. Not taking your privacy policy seriously can certainly damage brands not to mention corporate reputations.
Profiling
One reason why email marketing is an effective marketing tool is because of its inherent ability to collect data and then implement programs to accommodate and satisfy this information. In its simplest form, profiling is asking recipients about their preferences so that marketers can provide them with relevant information and offers on products and services that are of interest to them.
Keeping profiles simple is often the best rule of thumb. Essentially, marketers want to know who they are, what they want, how they want to be contacted and how often. It’s also prudent to provide end-users with access to view and freely update their profile. Putting control in the hands of the end-user is far better that having them unsubscribe from your emails because you sent them something they did not want to receive.
The smart marketer uses contests, questionnaires and polls to collect information and then aggregates the data with other sources (e.g. point-of-sale, order history, web logs, email metrics, etc.) to create powerful customer and prospect profiles. Once assembled, analysis and computer modeling can help them better understand the end-user and even create specific profiles such as most valuable customers (MVCs) or most active customers (MACs).
Personalization
This is where the power of email marketing really sparkles. You have permission. You have developed a best-of-class privacy policy. Your recipients like it and are comfortable with it. You have data and have profiled your customers and prospects.
Using your profile information and collected data, you now know exactly what each recipient wants, how they want it, and when they want it. Through a properly orchestrated email campaign, you can now cost-effectively leverage this customer information with appropriate content that has the right message and the right offer to the right person at the right time.
Personalization doesn’t mean sending the same message to your entire database and changing the opening line with “Dear .” In email marketing there is no “one size fits all.” Email marketing provides you with the capability to ensure that each person gets “personal” treatment from your organization. Experience has shown us that email marketers using personalization tend to have better open and response rates. They also have an easier time keeping the end user’s permission. In the end, the combination of permission, privacy, profiling and personalization will keep end users “hooked” on your company, your products and services, your messages and your future success.
Summary
Today, understanding and leveraging the power of the 4 Ps of email marketing - Permission, Privacy, Profiling and Personalization - can make or break a company’s marketing success. Consumers have seen the light. Most have been SPAMMED to death and they don’t like it. Each day more end users are experiencing the benefits provided by dynamic personalization through websites and personalized emails targeted to them. This is the new email marketing benchmark. Everything else is destined for the delete button.
Stefan Eyram has over 15 years of marketing and sales experience. Mr. Eyram is currently working with Connectus, a direct marketing industry leader, delivering permission-based e-mail marketing solutions. He can be reached at Stefan@ConnectusDirect.com. To contact the Vancouver office, call: 604-685-6577 ext. 322
Copyright © 2006, eBusiness Connection.
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