“2008 sees some major developments for email marketing. Online marketers are buzzing about the integration of email in the marketing mix. And about relevant and timely emails: getting the right message to the right person at the right time. Both will help achieve better engagement, higher response rates and a better % conversion to sales.”
‘Major developments’ discovered decades ago
I found this piece heading up an online emarketing newsletter back in ’08. Holy shmoley. Having been in direct marketing for almost twenty years, I was astonished.
These two direct marketing fundamentals are only ‘major developments’ in the sense that online marketers have been so slow to discover them. Good direct marketers have been integrating campaigns across multiple media, and attempting to target mailings intelligently, for many decades.
If you’re an inexperienced online marketer and integrated marketing / intelligent targeting are news to you, go digest some traditional direct marketing books. If Drayton Bird’s classics are all you read, you’ll be onto a winner.
Wryly, I wonder which direct marketing principles will be ‘discovered’ by fledgling marketers next. Lesson for businesses: check your marketer’s or agency’s CV before taking them on. ‘Young and vibrant’ ain’t always what it’s cracked up to be, and competition is far too fierce to risk missing a direct marketing trick.
