Marketing Profs

That tumultuous roar you can hear in the distance is a flood of commercial email sweeping its way toward your customers' inboxes. And governments, ISPs, trade organizations, email software manufacturers and others are busy erecting damns and weirs to stem, filter and regulate the flow.

Some email marketers desperately pump out messages as fast as possible, eager to make the most of the moment before too many barriers are complete. But in doing so they're forgetting some core principles of natural resource management. They're locked into a mining, rather than management, mentality.

The problem is the same in the forestry world. Faced with a large potential resource -- in this case an expanse of forest -- the owner can either manage or mine the trees at his disposal.

Those who take the mining approach clearfell the land and strip it of its value. Once each parcel of ground is exhausted of useful material, the owner moves on to the next patch.

The flow of revenue is high, but soon slows to a trickle as the most productive and accessible sites disappear, and more and more cost and effort is required to access, fell and process new tree stocks. Eventually, felling remote or unproductive areas becomes unviable and the owner looks for new business elsewhere.

Other forest owners think in terms of sustainable management. They, too, exploit the forest, but selectively, taking the choice timber and leaving enough material to grow and replace the trees that are removed.

They invest in the quality of the resource - replanting, weeding, pruning, controlling pests and diseases, fertilizing and more. All of which ensures a continuous and growing supply of high-value timber in perpetuity. Returns are initially lower than with mining, but last considerably longer. Nor is the owner damned to a never-ending search for new forests to exploit.

The resource value of an opt-in mailing list of prospects and customers, like that of a forest, is undisputed. You have a captive audience of individuals who've specifically asked to get your (marketing) messages. But do you see these addresses as something to mine or manage?

Too many marketers are seduced by the lure of quick and easy money. The result is clearfelling. They blast their lists with commercial messages, the aim being to get the maximum short-term revenue, at a minimum cost, and with little investment in long-term planning or in the address owners themselves.

It works for a while, but if they can't keep finding new addresses or lists to mine, the returns soon begin to collapse. Not only that, but they may find themselves with a few natural disasters on their hands; erosion (of customer confidence), climate change (in customer attitudes), floods (of unsubscribes), or desertification (watch those customers disappear).