Messaging News - December 2008 - (Page 19) “I think that small businesses have been using the wrong tools for email marketing.” —Janine Popick, VerticalResponse, Inc. oday’s marketers have the world at their fingertips—literally. The advent of modern online marketing solutions has created a brave new world of opportunity where the streets are paved with personalized content and inlayed with image gold. By leveraging the immediacy and wide-ranging reach of the Internet, online solutions greatly expand an organization’s marketing goals and possibilities. In this new universe, everyone, in every corner of the earth, is a potential customer. Why People Complain The benefits of online marketing are legion yet like every good solution, when used improperly, it ends up alienating and irritating the very people it was meant to attract. In researching this article, lack of user education and/or scruples seemed to surface time and again when looking for reasons why people complain about email marketing. Ultimately, lack of user integrity and a shortage of responsible internal resources topped the vendors’ own list of why good marketing solutions go bad. “I think that small businesses have been using the wrong tools for email marketing, mainly Outlook or the email client of their ISP. I think that more small businesses should be using an Email Service Provider (ESP) that helps them with best practices on how to more effectively communicate with their customers,” says Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse. “Serious ESPs, like VerticalResponse, manage complaints and unsubscribes from recipients that don’t want their email. We do this as a service to customers and won’t allow spammers to use our services. But let’s face it; everyone gets a complaint now and then, even customers with the best intentions. The difference is that serious ESPs want to help their customers learn best practices about email marketing. Specifically, it’s as crucial to understand the bounce and unsubscribe rates of your list as it is to understanding the click and open rates. Really getting a handle T on these two things will help every marketer use email marketing solutions more appropriately.” Eric Groves, senior vice president of worldwide strategy and market development at Constant Contact looks to his own inbox for lessons in what works and what doesn’t. “When I opened up my inbox this morning, I had a number of email messages from businesses that I know, that I opened and read. There were others that fell into one of two buckets: people I don’t know (complete spam) and messages from people that I do know that I didn’t care to open. The businesses sending the email that I opened are doing it right.” According to J.D. Peterson, director of product management for Lyris, technology and systems can do a lot to protect end-users, but ultimately it comes down to the sender. “The type of content and how often it is sent are decisions that ultimately rely on an individual,” he says. “That said, I think as a technology vendor, we can and should continue to do more to help users understand best practices and see how following these impact value (read: greater ROI) for marketers.” David Daniels, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, believes that marketers want to do the right thing, but they are burdened by a lack of insight into their customer data and a lack of staffing resources. In a recent JupiterResearch executive survey on the top challenges facing email marketers, 40 percent of respondents cited not having enough customer data, 37 percent said lack of adequate staffing resources and 34 percent stated email delivery and list/subscriber turnover. “Outside of addressing staffing challenges, these hurdles can be addressed through better data integration and analysis tools, as well as list hygiene,” says Daniels. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Forrester Research acquired JupiterResearch in July.) ints messagingnews.com 19 http://www.messagingnews.com
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