PRO Article
Four Ways Email Can Strengthen Relationships in Other Channels (and Why You Should Care)
I preach a lot about getting email out of the silo it's often relegated to within companies or marketing departments, and these days I think most marketers realize how important good email integration with other marketing (especially digital) channels and sales systems is to success.
But once you've created a regular email-communications program, or developed your smart auto-responders, are you remembering to strategically use email to strengthen and encourage relationships with your list members in other channels?
Yes, I'm talking about using email to grow and deepen connections with your people outside the inbox. Why would you want to do that? Lots of reasons, but here's the biggie: People use multiple media platforms for communication.
Conversations started in one channel don't just stay there. Simply because a customer signed up for your email doesn't mean that customer is not also following you on Twitter or Facebook and might want to communicate there, too.
If you're a retailer or other brick-and-mortar business, the dimensions broaden because your customers and prospects will interact with your brand in your storefronts or at your events, or both (not to mention direct mail and telephone).
Today we have seemingly endless ways to research, shop, and buy what we need and want. To an increasing degree, those purchase decisions involve multiple interaction points and channels along the path to a "buy" decision.
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Comments
Nice article on what we should all be doing. It's also important to note that when statistics are referenced they should be cited. The % of what people remember based on how it was delivered is in fact fallacious.
"Many people now associate the bogus percentages with Dale's "Cone of Experience," developed in 1946 by Edgar Dale. It provided an intuitive model of the concreteness of various audio-visual media. Dale included no numbers in his model and there was no research used to generate it. In fact, Dale warned his readers not to take the model too literally."
More on this can found at http://www.willatworklearning.com/2006/05/people_remember.html
I completely agree with you that email marketing should be used to foster relationships.
When people give their email address, it should be an opportunity for your brand to use it as a tool to target customers based on the VALUE they expect to receive - not blasting them with what you are trying to push.
This is a PULL marketing age, and I really believe that social media and SEO is highly important, but email marketing is another channel that cannot be ignored.
Vickie @Vickie_Smith
http://saywowmarketing.com