At the opening reception tonight, I heard repeatedly from email marketers that the biggest challenge they wanted insight on this week was how to get past short term thinking internally. Email channel
revenue is the crack-cocaine of direct marketing. Send out a bunch of emails and generate sales. Forget that we are churning the file and that 60%+ of the file is totally checked out. The short
term fix on revenue is a very powerful force - and frankly, it's legit. Who can argue with revenue? The answer is We Can. I'm encouraged to hear so many smart marketers today looking for
strategies to convince the internal brand managers and executive team that a longer term strategy of segmentation, relevance and customization will make more sense. Segmentation doesn't mean "send
less email." In fact, you may end up sending more email - but it will be more relevant email at the times when the subscriber is in market. A much better revenue proposition for higher lifetime
value. One retailer said that he was streamlining his goals in order to accomplish more in specific areas in order to prove the value of targeted messages. A financial services marketer is
testing cross selling strategies in transactional emails to prove the value of recency. A multi-channel retailer is doing a Mother's Day campaign to a very targeted select, to prove the email
channel's worth in driving purchases among lapsed buyers. Just because 20% of your file opened and responded doesn't mean the other 80% are neutral. In fact, they may be unsubscribing with their
delete button and ignoring your messages. They are worse than prospects, they are unreachable through the channel. The only way to win them back is to segment and work harder to create relevancy and
urgency. As the market saturates and list growth slows, the addition of new names will not cover the loss of these non-responders. Some marketers shared their approach to get one brand or
business unit to try some of these tactics. Proven results is the only way to encourage others to embrace testing changes. What segmentation will you try this year to prove the value of more
relevant email in your own program? Please let us know!