How to be a better eMail marketer by Andrew Kordek @AndrewKordek

Over the years I have heard quite a few musings from executives on the state of the email programs.  Here are some of my favorites:

1. Why do we need a preference center? Giving people a choice will limit the amount of people we can send too.
2. Everything is just fine with our email program.  Why should we invest in more people to just push email out?
3. Opt down?  Sounds more like a hassle and why should we give people the ability to get less email from us?
4. It’s great, but we really just need more people to subscribe to our program.
5. Our email program makes a ton of money, why the hell should we change something….just push the email out OK?

The single biggest mistake anyone running an email program can make is to accept that everything is fine.  Change is all around us and email is no exception.  Email marketing at its core is simplistic in nature, but requires a fair amount of resources and talent to do it right.  Good email marketing is somewhat easy, but great email marketing requires the full commitment of the executive team.  Your job as an email marketer is to protect the company’s most valuable natural resource: the subscriber base.

I am an optimist in life, but a realist in the way I approach running an email program.  Identify the things you want to change, gather the data and make the case for change in your organization.  If at first you don’t succeed, beat the drum slowly if you believe you are right.  Don’t make changes based on hunches or what you read off blogs and white papers. Most of all, don’t make changes to your program just because the executive team feels the need to exercise their influence because their other C-Level friends are “doing it in their program.”

Takeaway: Everything is NOT fine in your email program. Incorporate change because your program needs it, your customers want it and doggone it, it’s the right thing to do.