• by Stephanie Miller , December 12, 2012

Marketing people – particularly email marketing people – have an opportunity to change the entire way that business operates.  In fact, I would say that you CANNOT succeed, make money for your company, keep your job…. Uuless you EMBRACE THE ROLE OF CHANGE AGENT FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION.

Think about it.

• What do customers want from brands?  (A more human relationship – to be recognized as an individual, to be treated special when engaged more deeply, to be known.)
• What enables that kind of a relationship?  (Data – particularly digital data)
• What drives email marketing success?   (Data management and automation)
• Who in the organization knows more about how data can be used  (The Marketers)
• What do Marketers do with the data?  (…..not enough.)

The opportunity is to be not just USERS of data but to be STEWARDS of the data that helps create a more human relationship between consumers (or business professionals) and brands.  The solution is part technology, part process, part politics.  But it’s mostly about talent and vision. 

I was lucky to lead a panel of smart marketers about how the organizational structure impacts email marketing success.  We found that it's impossible to separate organizational structure from marketing practices and objectives.  MAkes sense, right?  That business goals drive how we focus attention, resources, vendors and talent in the organization.

Email marketers drive innovation every day - mostly because we sit close to the data and have so much understanding of the subscriber.  That can feel like the tail wagging the dog, but in fact, email marketing influences every other channel through the testing, analysis and learning. 

So, if we are central to the business - why not be the CMO someday?    Being an email marketing change agent is good practice for that role!

Thanks to my fantastic panelists Christina Michelle Bailey, VP, Partner Relations, iVillage.com, NBCUniversal; Kirsty Montgomery, Global Email Marketing Manager, Charles Tyrwhitt; Brett Schultz, Online Marketing Manager, Comcast Business Services; and Alessandra Souers, Madam No-Spam, JibJab Media.