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The Future of E-Marketing | |
Presenters: Parick O'Neal, Mango Graphics Communications; Megan Dawson, marketing consultant for Sun Educational Services; Joan Doolittle, information architect at Leopard Communications; Patricia Hursh, e-marketing specialist at XOR Inc.; Peg Miller, director of marketing at Windows & .NET Magazine; and Andy Petro, director of marketing at Eclipse.
The following summary of the BWA panel appeared in Front Range TechBiz, 12/8/2001 (www.frtechbiz.com)
Integrate all marketing efforts, panelists say
By Jean Suffin, CorrespondentOnline marketing presents big opportunities for companies to bring in business and communicate with customers. But to get the most from e-marketing, companies should integrate it with their overall marketing campaigns, a panel of marketing experts said Nov. 27 at a Boulder Writer’s Alliance meeting at NCAR.
Overall, panel members emphasized that companies should know their audiences, gear their online marketing towards customer needs, and maintain consistency and continuity among all marketing efforts — online and off.
“We are an example of doing it wrong,” said Andy Petro, director of marketing at Eclipse Inc., a Boulder company that provides software to distributors to automate their business processes. He said he learned the hard way that keeping the Internet marketing group separate from the corporate marketing group wouldn’t produce the desired results.
“We had the Web development people on a separate floor from the marketing team,” Petro said. Eclipse integrated the two, and now its Web site is aesthetically consistent and sends the same message as the rest of its marketing materials, he said.
The panelists agreed that many corporations with separate Internet divisions have experienced the same frustration, and that the trend is to absorb Web marketing in the corporate marketing division.
All the other marketing mediums should be used to move a company’s audience to its Web site, said Steve Miller, founder and owner of IdeaSource Creative Marketing Services LLC in Broomfield. IdeaSource is a marketing agency with a focus on the Internet and Web-based tools.
That way, companies can track hits, customize the content to readers’ individual needs and reap the numerous benefits that marketing online presents, Miller said.
“The Web is not a stand-alone tool for marketing,” he said. “It’s an integration tool and a central place to drive all of your marketing.”
Staffing can be expensive, so hiring consultants to assist in developing your marketing program is a great option, according to Patrick O’Neal, new business developer at Mango Graphics in Boulder. Mango offers many services, including print, packaging and Web site development.
“Don’t overlook the value of traditional marketing firms,” O’Neal said. “The trend is back to blended, integrative marketing, and there are tons of firms looking for business.”
Some panelists said if your company has the money, hire a team to develop the Web site.
“Hire a copywriter to collaborate with Web designers to build Web pages,” O’Neal said. “Hire an information architect to decide which text should be dynamic, where it goes and how it flows.”
One benefit of online marketing is the ability to hone in on customers and prospects, and reach them personally, said Patricia Hursh, e-marketing specialist at XOR Inc. in Boulder, which provides application development and system management.
“Get inside the head of your customer and think about their issues and concerns,” she said. She cited one of her clients, a flower company, as an example. It sends out individual e-mails to customers reminding them that it’s time to send a gift. “They could send out blast messages all the time, but what people find valuable is the reminders,” she said.
In other words, “relevance equals revenues,” said Ray Thompson, co-founder of NewGuard, a Boulder company that offers Web, e-business and other services.
Panelists offered these tips concerning e-mail blasts and newsletters:
• Allow for levels of readability so the reader can click through to the most valuable information.
• Summarize e-mail blasts with a table of contents and titles, and let the reader choose where they want to go.
• Use bullet points with links in newsletters.
• Allow the reader to unsubscribe to e-mails.
• Create your own lists instead of hiring list companies. This will ensure that you get profiles of your readers and that you have their vital statistics.
• Make sure your readers know whom the message is from by making your company name or logo visible.
It was the panel’s consensus that e-mail blasts and newsletters both have been successful in bringing in and sustaining business, and that the transition from print media to e-mail newsletters has been an easy one.
Panel members emphasized companies should know their audiences, gear their online marketing toward their individual needs, and maintain consistency and continuity among all marketing efforts — online and off.
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