In our commentary column we discussed the pervasiveness of email marketing, yet many marketers aren’t fully utilizing its capabilities. It begs the question, why aren’t marketers better leveraging email?
From our experience of helping email marketers across North America, there are three main reasons that many are dragging their heels:
Time constraints and focus
Need for a skilled team with more specialists
Lack of clarity around the plan
In our opinion, marketers have so much on their plate that they focus most of their energy on what’s easy and visible (ie. display ads, paid search & social). Today’s marketers have to choose from over 16 different vehicles. However, there is only so much time and resources for marketers. Marketers also find it hard to keep up with “digital marketing” - 49% of them citing that it’s harder to be a digital marketing expert today than two years ago (Ipsos Reid Digital Pulse report 2021).
Email marketing teams need more time or extra help.
To many executives, email marketing sounds easy… ready, aim, fire! But as a direct messaging medium, email is actually much more technical and has many components to ensure the right message gets delivered to the right person at the right time (while also ensuring compliance and privacy). Experienced marketers will likely tell you that there are lots of components to good email marketing. Other challenging factors include the high cost of technology, increasing complexity, and increasing specialization. Companies need technical marketing specialists, but brands typically underinvest in their email teams and run them on a shoestring budget.
At the root of the problem, many marketers do not have an updated email plan, clear strategic objectives, and a roadmap. They have built a house but the foundation may be shaky and the interior of the house is not in order. Email is more often treated as their “cottage” (second home). Whether it’s your primary or secondary priority, the first step should be to get a house inspection by experienced professionals. Inspectors know what to look for, they highlight any weaknesses or gaps.
Now What
If you are one of the many marketers who are not sure what to do next… then don’t do it alone. Save yourself time and call expert specialists who have seen it all before. Hire an unbiased third party to conduct a quick checkup (or even a more comprehensive audit).
In our 25+ years of doing assessments, it is quite common to find incomplete & broken foundations. These types of “semi-built email” programs spend too much time on manual/tactical execution, are often inefficient and deliver subpar performance. Industry research also shows that executional capabilities vary considerably across the email industry.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Learn the best practices or marketing hacks from inside practitioners. Remember it’s also important to do a checkup before you scale or make big changes to your email program.
There is an old saying that it is wise to “diagnose before you prescribe”. It’s important to have regular checkups and find out where the gaps or weaknesses are. Otherwise, you may be wasting valuable resources of people, money, and time.
Need help? Start here, and learn more about the Tekside Email PEERTM Review.