Marketing Profs

When you're in the campaign trenches and knee-deep in metrics reports, it's easy to lose sight of some broader issues concerning your approach to email marketing.

Here are some reminders to help you step back and reevaluate your efforts.

1. Don't let legislation drive you to distraction

Compliance with anti-spam legislation is (obviously) critical to email marketers. But don't let it distract you from other key marketing issues. Otherwise, it's like ensuring your restaurant conforms to food hygiene regulations and then forgetting to cook meals that people actually want to eat.

For example, the focus on CAN-SPAM compliance led some marketers to forget that recipients and legislators don't necessarily share the same definitions of what's acceptable. Just because the government says it's legal to send the email doesn't mean you should.

Legitimate email marketing was always based on the concept of permission. Successful email marketing is still based on that premise, not on simply meeting some legal requirement.

That means relevant, valuable emails sent to people who asked or agreed to get them. We would all do well to go back to some of our email marketing primers and remind ourselves of basic permission issues.

2. Revise your understanding of what email marketing covers

One of the positives arising from CAN-SPAM discussions is the wider awareness that marketing emails cover more than just dedicated campaigns or retention-oriented newsletters.

Every email contact with a prospect or customer is a marketing opportunity—a point overlooked by many top companies. Not always an opportunity in a direct marketing/sales sense, but certainly in a brand-building or relationship-marketing sense.