You Can’t Be Fully Integrated Without Ted
Hi, meet Ted. Ted is your email marketing manager. He’s dedicated, direct and has a track record for producing great ROI. He’s been around forever and everybody relies on him. So you’re looking at your budget and thinking: I can’t do it all, I really need to cut something. “Ah ha,” you say to yourself, “I’ll drop email marketing. That will allow me to do all these other things. After all everyone is doing social and mobile marketing these days. I’ll switch to that.”
Quick, can someone tell me what’s wrong with this thinking? Does everyone communicate daily via social and mobile networks? Do you really believe the “email is dead” hype that’s going around? Of course you don’t. Burger King said it best when it said “have it your way.” Marketers know that everyone is different. “Let me choose the channels I want to receive,” the public cries. Some like print, some like email, some like social and some like it hot.* The only real way to reach everyone in your audience is to have an integrated marketing campaign. After all, if you went to your boss and said, “My plan for next year is to be integrated using every tool, but email.” What do you think he or she would say? “Go back to the drawing board, think a little harder and talk to Ted. He’s the only one who can get our marketing fully integrated.” The stars would align, streamers fall from the sky and you’ll be paraded around the office on everyone’s shoulders. OK, that’s a bit over dramatic, but you get the point. Now go talk to Ted.
* “Hot” refers to whatever is the latest trend, it’s the new car smell in marketing that lasts a few years, then starts to fade as the smell of that lost fry under your desk, the spilled pop on your desk and that mystery smell that came the day after that creepy guy from IT stopped by to fix your computer start to take over.
Email remains our highest-performing marketing channel – hot is cool but it doesn’t always pay all the bills…