Email marketing:  Larger companies looking beyond, smaller companies jumping on board

By Judith Nemes

Compiled from B2B Online

E-mail marketing veteran Bill McCloskey has been watching e-mail trends from an interesting vantage point these days as founder and chairman of New York-based Email Data Source. The company has a database of 8 million e-mail campaigns dating back to 2003 and collects 1 million new messages every month. EMI recently spoke to McCloskey about key industry trends. Among them, he pointed out:

1. The largest corporations shifting focus from e-mail marketing to newer channels.
   Many of the larger Fortune 100 companies are pulling their attention away from e-mail and instead looking at other new marketing channels, such as mobile texting, RSS, blogging and social networks. The tried and true e-mail marketing campaign is not the hot, exciting toy in the boardroom at these companies.
2. More smaller companies jumping on the e-mail marketing bandwagon.
   On the other hand, I’ve noticed over the last six months stronger interest in smaller companies using e-mail in their b-to-b efforts. The insurance industry and others are beginning to see a lot of excitement in e-mail marketing because the technology is more sophisticated and it’s easier for them to create the campaigns and manage them. The price point has come down too, so now we are seeing the smaller guys using e-mail marketing to level the playing field.
3. E-mail marketing campaigns expanding beyond in-house lists.
   In the b-to-b world, a lot of successful marketing is happening through sponsorship of affinity newsletters and magazines online. Lots of people in a particular business subscribe to the trade magazines of that industry and they see the banner ads and white papers offered by companies that advertise in those affinity publications.
4. Brands being compromised in the marketplace.
   Over the last couple of months I’ve noticed a big increase in the number of spam e-mail and phishing schemes where people are illegally using large technology companies’ domains ... to get their own word out to sophisticated users. It’s important to monitor your e-mails if you want to protect your brand.

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Hottest button:  Integrated Marketing Communications

By Bob Liodice

Compiled from Marketing Musings, ANA blog

Recently, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) released its annual survey of senior marketers’ “hot buttons” – areas that marketers wanted or needed to spend increasing amounts of time and attention in the coming year. At the top of the list was Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC).

It’s not like this subject is new. We’ve been talking IMC for decades – kicked off by the groundbreaking book on the subject co-authored by Don Schultz and Bob Lauterborn. What has people fascinated is that “integration” has become exponentially complex – yet infinitely more effective. The complexity is born of the wider array of emerging media vehicles available to marketers and the rapidly changing demographic profile of consumers. With agencies and marketers relatively “inexperienced” with what works / what doesn’t, the sands for effective IMC shift very quickly.

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