Email as an ongoing experience for readers
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on September 13, 2007
One danger in online marketing is the seductive power of technology.All the magic email tools, services and associated software (particularly the numbers they reveal after every email goes out) lead us to obsess with the details, the microanalysis.
Send email, get sales, pat self on back.
(Pause)
Send email, get sales, pat self on back.
(Pause)
Send email, get sales, pat self on back.
It works.
But that neglects the role of your emails as an experience. Each email received is an interaction with your business or company.
And the sum total of those interactions can have a heady impact on the reader's perception of you and your products (not to mention their purchase behavior both online and offline).
Just because this holistic, macro-level, big picture, behavioral impact is hard to measure doesn't mean it isn't there.
Matt Blumberg makes the point nicely in a recent blog post, writing "...the whole is worth more than the sum of the parts." And he has some good tips on how you can use that understanding to improve your marketing.
This harks back to the early days of email marketing and the classical understanding of what makes a good email newsletter.
That understanding says that immediate sales are a nice byproduct of a newsletter program. But the true power and benefit lies in the long-term impact on the reader.
The newsletter focuses on delivering value (traditionally in the form of useful information) rather than direct promotional messages.
Seen over time, it consistently strengthens the customer or prospect relationship, and creates a mindset in the reader where your business becomes the automatic choice when they have a related need.
As such, it might be worth revisiting some of the older literature on email newsletters to remind ourselves of the longer-term benefits of treating email as a series of related messages, rather than a disparate collection of promotions.
Try, for example, Michael Katz's article archive, the Keeping the Key report, or the articles in the branding category here at Email Marketing Reports.
Tags: email newsletters, email marketing, branding, email marketing strategy, the email experience
[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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