E-marketing revolution gathers momentum

Electronic technology is turning traditional marketing on its head, opening up a new spectrum of avenues through which marketers can get their messages across to defined target audiences.

"E-marketing requires a totally different approach from conventional marketing. It`s all about `GRAB` - growth, retain, acquire and brand: Grabbing your customers` attention and making best use of the digital communications channels now available," says Candy Goodman, e-marketing manager at electronic messaging specialist Striata SA.

Over the past five years, the Internet, e-mail, and SMS and, now, MMS technology applied in cellular telephones systems, have offered marketers alternative communication channels.

"E-mail, the Internet and cellular technology are now serious weapons in the direct marketer`s armoury," says Goodman. "These mediums are challenging the traditional marketing media and are opening up exciting alternative methods of communicating with customers, grabbing their attention, prompting an action, and generating a response."

Careful planning and management of marketing communications through these channels is essential. A gung-ho approach will invariably do more harm than good.

E-mail is a most cost-effective way of communicating with a customer database. Goodman says it can also be used to enhance the database as well as generate two-way communication.

"However, an e-mail campaign needs considerable planning, the design must cater for the lowest common denominator and preview pane locality preferences, wording must be carefully selected and the overall presentation must denote respect and relevance in order to obtain a response or initiate a click action. It must also adhere to the requirements of the spam scorecard system and be in line with established best practice."

Marketers planning an e-mail campaign need to pay attention to detail, particularly regarding the database. Checking address structures to ensure domain names and address details are correct is critical.

"Cleaning and updating data is an essential and ongoing process as 30% of the average e-mail database changes every year, so it is also important to provide customers with an easy tool through which they can update their profile," says Goodman.

"It is also critical to track responses and identify and manage those addresses that bounce so that the customer can be contacted by another method such as telephone or SMS. You don`t want to lose the customer due to bad data."

Local and historical research has also identified some interesting consumer response patterns to e-mail. The statistics reveal that the best days for reading e-mail are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The worst is Monday. The best days for click response are Tuesdays and Thursdays while Friday is the worst.

Electronic newsletters are also proving to be successful direct marketing tools and should be carefully planned to add value to the customer. Goodman says clear goals should be established to ensure content relevance. The overall objective may be to increase product knowledge, to cross-sell, convey information important to the customer, or it could be a call-to-action or simply to open a channel of communication.

"It is important not to over-communicate, so establish customers` expectations on frequency and content. Interaction is also critical so invite reader comments with call-me-back buttons and make strategic use of customer feedback."

While it has limitations in the length of the message, SMS has become an effective medium of communication with customers, particularly for the customer who is on the move, as a means of alerting them to an event or special offer, or prompting a reply with feedback.

Goodman says SMS can be very effective with these notification-type messages or for customer relationship building with birthday greetings. "Messages that make an offer to the customer can contain a simple reply option to trigger a request for further communication with the customer by telephone or e-mail.

"Now multimedia messaging services (MMS) are also coming to the fore. The technology effectively combines audio, animated images, video streaming and text to deliver a vibrant marketing message directly to the mobile phones of the individuals within the target customer database."

Viral marketing campaigns, described by Goodman as word-of-mouth marketing facilitated by technology and including refer-a-friend functionality, are gaining ground. They are primarily used for customer acquisition and database building.

"Success is dependent upon the relationship a company has with its customers, its knowledge of the target market, the inclusion of a fun element and a competition with prizes that are matched to the brand."

Goodman concludes that no matter the medium, the communication has to be based on respect and relevance and be designed to obtain a response or generate an action. "Send the mundane, generic or irrelevant too often and the customer will disappear."