In the brave new world of today’s marketplace, email marketing has emerged as one of the most cost-effective and targeted ways to reach consumers and businesses. Most companies have realized that some form of email marketing is part of a complete sales-and-marketing arsenal.
Like anything else, some companies market by email better than others. Most larger companies outsource their email marketing programs to specialized agencies or to broader agencies (who then subcontract the work to these specialized agencies), or they manage it in-house through an ASP or software.
A few companies, though, still take an ad hoc approach to email marketing. Some companies create a little content, throw an HTML image in the file, and plug their database into the BCC’ fields of their marketing manager’s Outlook program, which serves as their deployment tool. Other companies are even less sophisticated: they put their entire company’s mailing list in an email’s To’ field and fire away, thereby exposing thousands of email addresses to potential spammers, eager salespeople, and the overly curious. Of course, neither of these slipshod methods allows for any sort of reporting from the potential treasure chest of information available through email marketing. (Please note that a read’ receipt does not count as reporting.)
Haphazard, primitive approaches like these are like using legal paper for a direct-mail piece. If you recognize your own methods in the scenario above, your first question should be: “What can I do next to avoid looking like the digital Flintstones?” Then, once you have resolved to launch or optimize your email-marketing program, you must decide:
Should we outsource this program or bring it in house?
The Experts Say: Outsource
Many mistakenly believe that, by bringing their programs in-house, they will save money, use internal resources more effectively, and improve sales with the Jedi-like power bestowed by new software. But “Bringing Email Marketing In-House? Think Again,” a brief written by Eric Schmitt of Forrester Research, demonstrates the fallacy of this assumption.
Analyst Schmitt writes, “Most marketers hope to bring email delivery in-house by 2003 [But] most large-scale consumer marketing organizations are better off sticking with application service providers and agencies.” Schmitt’s research finds that digital marketers who use specialist suppliers enjoy better results from their digital marketing campaigns than those who manage them in-house. In fact, sales generated from email marketing are four times higher at companies that outsource their email marketing efforts than at those handling it in-house. (“Source: Forrester Research, Inc.”)
Effective Campaigns Require Resources
Both small businesses and Fortune 500 companies should outsource their email marketing efforts unless they have fully trained, dedicated in-house experts who can manage the scope necessary for a successful email marketing campaign. An effective email marketing team includes creative designers, content managers, copywriters, programmers, list hygienists, database experts, strategy managers, and reporting analysts, who make sense of the voluminous data generated by the campaign.
My experience on both the client and agency sides has uncovered few organizations that are set up for such layered management, and few that want to take this effort on. As corporations continue to downsize and staffs are asked to do more with less, few companies or employees can devote the time and resources needed to become specialists in email marketing.
Developing Expertise Takes Time
If you’re still dubious, consider this: how many companies film their own commercials instead of hiring a specialized ad agency or production company to produce them? If you are not an expert in something, you have two choices: become an expert, or hire one. If you want to remain nimble and responsive to market demands, hiring an expert is often the best option.
Richard Kadzis, Director of Marketing and Communications for CoreNet Global, a professional association for corporate real-estate executives, outsourced his company’s email marketing efforts because his newly merged enterprise lacked the time and resources to develop expertise quickly. “CoreNet Global is a young organization, and internal infrastructure is still a factor in our operations,” he explained. “Our group was formed a year ago by integrating two former competing associations, both of which were increasing their e-marketing, but without the added advantage of tracking, list hygiene, and other enhancements.”
Kadzis added, “Our need to track campaigns and our lack of an IT platform robust enough to perform that function are the key reasons we opted to outsource the function. As a global association with 7,500 members in 25 countries, electronic delivery of information and programs is critical, and understanding the response to that deployment is just as important.”
Leave It to the Experts-While You Focus on Your Core Business
Whether they choose to outsource email marketing or to handle it internally, companies should not just acquire technical and strategic expertise-they must also establish policies, procedures, and best practices to ensure proper management and protocol.
Katherine Weeks, co-founder of the trendy and fast-growing retailer Turq Jewelry, comments, “We didn’t know the quickest and best way to set up a top-tier email marketing program-including developing internal policies and best practices-so we needed to outsource to experts. That way, we could focus on our rapid growth and design plans. With email marketing as the basis for our retention efforts, we needed to deliver a superior program without diluting our own resources.”
Weeks continued, “By outsourcing, we achieved all of our goals for acquisition and retention marketing, while the Turq team focused on growing other key areas of the business. It was a weight off our shoulders to put such an important part of our strategy into capable hands.”
Your Customers Are Worth It
Neither money nor resources can automatically handle all of the requirements of a thriving email marketing program. As with any relationship, meaningful customer relationships require time, investment, and long-term commitment. Because your customers are ultimately your bottom line, they’re worth more than a slapdash approach. As the best way to reach them, email marketing programs deserve the applied, specialized knowledge of experts.
G. Simms Jenkins is Founder and Principal of BrightWave Marketing (on the Web at www.BrightWaveMarketing.com), an Atlanta-based firm specializing in email marketing and customer relationship services. He has extensive relationship-marketing experience on both the client and agency sides. He can be reached at sjenkins@brightwavemarketing.com.
