Crunch Ends Email 'Batch and Blast'

Below is an article that was first published in the DMA Email Marketing Council email newsletter called InfoBox and then picked up by Precision Marketing on 19 May.

According to the media, the UK faces the greatest economic correction since The Great Depression. While newspapers tend to exaggerate to sell more copies, it is clear that the economic outlook for 2008 is not rosy. In tough times, marketing is usually the first thing to get cut, so the question is: should email marketers be worried?

I started in the email business at the height of the US dotcom boom. It seemed that there was a lavish launch party almost every night. When the crash came, the launch parties were replaced by pink slip parties. This might not have been the band playing on the deck of the Titanic but we were more than a little nervous.

It turned out to be the best thing for the industry. The dot-coms were early adopters of email marketing and without their largesse we tightened our belts. We also had to start running our businesses.like businesses. When we sifted through the ashes we found a large number of case studies on the effectiveness of the channel, which convinced more "traditional" companies to dive into the email pool.

Fast forward to 2008. Should we be worried? No, because just like the dotcom bust, this will force email to grow up. We have spent the intervening years talking about targeting and relevance but have not done much about it. This has been driven in large part by the low cost of each incremental email. Unlike other channels, there is no disincentive to over-target. On top of this, email continues t o be one of the most effective direct marketing channels, which creates tremendous internal pressures to email more people more often.

The email industry has proven that targeted, relevant emails deliver better initial response and engagement over the long term. At the same time, consumers have little patience with irrelevant emails and will quickly become disengaged. This emerging economic environment will give email marketers the incentive to stop the "batch and blast" approach and start leveraging the level of micro-targeting that email allows. The efficacy of the channel will allow us to keep or grow our budgets and the tough times will force us to become a much stronger channel.