I find email marketing automation an interesting concept, and do wonder if email marketing is dead and as marketers do we need to think smarter and outside the box when it comes to getting the message across to our customers. I think there is a place for email automation, but as long as it sits with all your other marketing functions, such as Social Media, Website interaction, blogging and offline marketing.
I recently attended a seminar on email marketing, I was really looking forward to the event, and see what new functions and ideas were going to be presented. What I wasn't prepared for was the strange speaker line-up, maybe it was an oversight, or perhaps it was done on purpose, I'm not sure, but whatever it was, each of the speakers in turn completely contradicted each other.
The first speaker, Mr Automation
Mr Automation, talked about the power of marketing automation, how these very powerful tools can assist your business in gaining more leads, keeping in touch with customers, etc, etc etc, you know the drill on Marketing Automation, He said... "90% of our email communication to our customers is automated and this should be the future for all businesses."
The 2nd speaker, Ms Personal
Ms Personal, spoke about quality not quantity and the efforts their company are going to be more personalised with their emails, sending less, ensuring the quality of each individual email customer had been tailored to fit their profile, she said... "The key to gaining more leads and more business, is less quantity, less automation and more personalised email messaging."
The 3rd speaker, Mr SendMoreEmail
Mr Send-More-Email, well you can probably gather from his name what he was all about, he said... "The more email the better, just keep sending it and sending it, personalised, automated it doesn't matter, just as long as you Send More Email!"
What Now?
Where does this leave me, I tend to think a little bit of everything in moderation is the way to go, although I'd probably steer away from Mr Send-More-Email as that is simply not my style. What do you think? Is email marketing all about the numbers, should we focus more on personlising each email or should we simply just send more email?
