The Elevation of Email

(I wrote this a week ago, and it’s reproduced here with the kind permission of Precision Marketing)

We live in times of marketing precision, or at least we would like to believe we do. We’re part of a society that has almost entirely embraced the concept of personalised, elective communication. Many of us are starting to run our social lives through Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and the like. It’s happened, and quickly.

Recently I glanced at a 1-to-1 marketing book written in 1997. It predicted that newspapers would all soon be personalised: 30% of all Japanese homes (in 1997) had a fax modem, therefore in short order the notion of truly tailored content would be reality. Ten years on and the world has changed beyond recognition - it’s easy to take the micky but actually we have no idea how fast or how our world will change over the next five years. 

Having said that, we are all using terms like eCRM like it’s already here. Relationship marketing, a concept developed by the same kind of people who wrote the book, and honed and refined by DM agencies, has led to a tactical embrace of digital. This is driven by the fact that digital removes most of the barriers that stand in the way of great DM - the print, production, distribution and response mechanisms that devour time. Digital makes feedback and instant re-segmentation, automated personalisation and event-triggered content more or less immediate and more or less cheap.

But this is all based on the use of email as the channel that replaces snail mail-enabled printed materials. And eCRM should be so much more than that. A digitally-centred relationship marketing programme - centred so because of the immediacy and cost efficiency - should not mean email alone. In fact, while from a digital agency’s perspective eCRM also includes mobile, microsites, online PR and online promotions, sometimes even interactive TV, eCRM must also make certain that it is not closed-minded. There is an absolute requirement to consider all media - sometimes that tactile experience cannot be matched. PoS, catalogues and direct mail can play a critical part in the relationship. Cross-sell, up-sell and retention, the keys to eCRM, must be channel agnostic. But marketing precision means the appropriate choice of every contact point. None of us can do it alone - no matter how much we would love to. While digital will inevitably be the hub, delivery will take specialists of all hues.