Target, Target, Target... Even With E-mail

By: Joseph Kiefer

I joined the ranks of the marketing world a little over 10 years ago. I cut my teeth on developing mail plans for continuing education seminars. At that time we were just starting to rent response files.

Looking back, it is amazing we were able to get the response we did from those files. We learned and changed quickly over the next 10 years, but nothing was more important than our increased efforts towards targeting. Databasing, modeling, data mining, analytics, appending... were all parts of an effort to narrow our list and send our marketing efforts to only those most likely to respond.

When we started e-mail marketing our processes and systems were not as advanced as those for our direct mail offerings. At the time we were not sure the best way to benefit from this new medium. Initially, like many companies, we were sending out offers to our whole file at once, and as we saw returns, we increased the frequency. We quickly realized that this was not the best way to utilize e-mail and from there we started down a very similar path to the one we went on with direct mail.

The problem inherent in e-mail is that the cost is so low that you may not feel like you have to narrow your list or do the same type of targeting that you would do with your direct mail campaigns. In reality, you should be using many, if not all, of the same methods you have already developed on the direct mail side. Are you modeling, databasing, using analytics, appending...? Are you tracking your unsubscribes, bounces, clicks, opens...? Each e-mail you send has a cost. The cost could be an unsubscribe or it could be alienating your customer to the point of not purchasing through a different channel. Even if they don't unsubscribe, a customer that receives untargeted messages will soon learn to tune out all of your marketing messages.

I don't think we are as far along as we would like to be yet, but we are moving in the right direction. The e-mail industry as a whole still has some work to do as well. Don't wait for the industry to get you started in the right direction.