Raising the stakes in permission marketing: The need to better manage enterprise e-mail processes

Jeremi Karnell, Founder & CMO | One to One Interactive
March 27, 2002

Overview

Similar to the early days of the Internet, when "brochureware" web sites were popping up all over the enterprise, corporate e-mail campaigns today tend to originate from multiple and often unconnected channels within an organization: sales, web, direct marketing, customer service, and in some cases, business partners. To make matters even more complicated, e-mail recipients are often given the choice of multiple response paths, including call center, online, and/or brick and mortar establishments. While it is desirable for all departments to be able to leverage the efficiency of the online channel, managing multiple outbound campaigns and their resulting inbound responses is a real challenge — one that needs to be addressed at a corporate level in order to ensure success.

The problem is that most organizations are not structured to manage the above process. Traditional approaches to sales and marketing do a poor job at addressing the sophisticated, cross-functional online/offline requirements that are inherent in a best-in-class e-mail program. A recent study by IMT Strategies titled Enterprise Permission Marketing: Best Practices for Managing Targeted E-Mail Programs Across the Organization states that "…E -Mail marketing managers complain that they are struggling to govern marketing programs and enforce meaningful permission policies on an enterprise level while at the same time growing their e-lists into the millions to stay ahead of the competition."

The IMT study went on to uncover several important issues that are critical to the long-term viability of the e-mail channel, and must be addressed when crafting corporate e-mail strategies. Two key findings include:

• There is a growing gap between customer expectations for permission marketing and the permission marketing programs that Global 2000 marketers deliver
• Without better process and policy management, many marketers risk destroying the e-mail channel before it has time to mature

The gap between customer expectations and Global 2000 programs

Current research reveals that online customers are raising the bar for what constitutes "best-in-class" permission marketing. This trend is true even with new online users – 54% say they receive too many e-mails, compared with 33% just a year ago (see Figure 1). Beyond feeling that they receive too much e-mail, users are also frustrated by untargeted, poorly timed, and irrelevant e-mails.

Figure 1 (Source: Forrester Research, Effective E-Mail Marketing 2001)


Consumers are also putting pressure on State and National Legislators to start to regulate how marketers us the e-mail channel. 16 States have passed a total of 18 pieces of legislation to address e-mail marketing. Congress is reviewing two bills concerning Spam and privacy issues. Although, the main thrust of these laws is to protect individuals against fraudulent uses of e-mail, their reach extends to those marketers who us e-mail for legitimate means (i.e. communicating with their opt-in customer base, customer care efforts, etc.) and will effect how campaigns are executed.

In order for marketers to address the growing dissatisfaction consumers are feeling towards e-mail marketing, they need to:

• Develop e-mail conversations, not campaigns
  • Segment customers based on their motivations that incorporate multiple profile dimensions
  • Sequence e-mail delivery according to the user's buying/care cycle (i.e. Casual Shopping vs. Active Researching vs. Ready to Buy)
• Standardize the Opt-In/Opt-Out Process both online and offline
• Gradually deepen level of permission with the users
  • Ask about interest and preferences for frequency of contact
• Enable user-specified communication, content and product preference registration
• Modify messages and tone for the target audience
  • Personalize as much as possible
  • Globalize and Localize content for International recipients

Lack of process and policy management threatens to destroy the e-mail channel

While it is true that most organizations have established basic privacy and opt-out policies, most still do not have anyone that has taken full charge of the channel at the executive level. This lack of oversight has resulted in most enterprises operating without controls or policies in place governing how employees handle e-mail as it relates to marketing. The absence of executive leadership further contributes to poor targeting (relevancy) and over communication (frequency). These are the "two issues most likely to make customers "opt-out" of e-mail relationships or simply delete the message".

Figure 2 (Source: IMT Strategies Benchmark Survey of Marketers 2001)


IMT believes that organizations will need to take the following key steps in order to harness the power of e-mail marketing through better process management:

1. Put an Enterprise E-Mail Process in Place:

   Define a role for e-mail and lay out an enterprise process for managing the e-mail channel. This process should extend from e-mail address acquisition and maintenance activities, through e-mail campaign planning and execution to measurement/analytics and policy administration;

2. Put Someone in Charge of this Process:

   Appoint a VP of e-mail marketing to govern policies across the enterprise, manage the e-mail channel and hold agencies and business units accountable for performance;

3. Create a Policy Blueprint for Success:

   Architect policies that will pave the way for sustainable revenue growth, cost reduction and relationship enhancement;

4. Get the Right Help from the Outside:

   Evaluate solutions providers and agencies based on their ability to support permission marketing business processes across the enterprise;

5. Measure E-Mail Campaign Performance and Channel Economics:

   Put in place meaningful measures of e-mail campaign and channel performance that align with both business objectives and return;

6. Develop and Bottle E-Mail Best Practices:

   Codify e-mail campaign best practices across the organization to move up the learning curve faster;

7. Formalize E-Mail Budget and Resource Allocation:

   Make permission e-mail programs part of the corporate planning and budget process.

Conclusion

While it is imperative for enterprises to apply better professional management approaches towards the use of e-mail and define and fix the marketing process that support its use, these are just the beginning steps. Future success will require e-mail to be integrated into broader CRM initiatives and integrated as part of a "multl-channel" online/offline marketing approach.

Furthermore, agencies, third-party e-mail specialists, ASPs and media networks that today only provide third-party list buying, partial campaign support and transmission services are going to need to evolve to be able to meet the more sophisticated needs of marketers. This will include the ability to strategically help enterprises with business-process re-engineering in order to meet e-mail marketing best practices, technical expertise in integrating CRM and personalization systems into the permission marketing process and advanced database/analytical services (to name a few).

Finally, enterprises will need to allow their customers and prospects to have much greater control over their permission relationships. This will require the development of a secure and easy to use e-mail management center connected to their corporate website where individuals may opt-in/opt-out of e-mail communications, choose the type of content they wish to receive, select the format and frequency of the e-mails they receive, and access customer care if necessary.

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