Technology and big data have been changing email marketing for many years now, in many cases for the better. But, in some cases, the technological revolution is making the email marketer’s job harder, less efficient, and taking them away from the work that attracted many of them to the industry to begin with.
Our upcoming webinar — in concert with the Email Experience Council — will address these changes and offer advice for the email marketer who’s struggling to adjust to the new reality. We’ll look at this phenomenon through the lens of research we recently completed, asking email marketing pros from across the country to discuss their opinions on the state of the industry, how efficient their teams are, and how they see their jobs changing.
As the marketing cloud has grown in popularity as an ESP solution for B2C companies, it’s become easier for small and medium-sized businesses to send large numbers of emails to growing lists of customers. But, as customer data needs have grown in both importance and complexity, enterprise marketers have found that the limitations of cloud solutions tend to make them less efficient when it comes to setting up campaigns. The sending process itself may have improved, but the building of emails has become, in many cases, an arduous process that turns the job of the email marketer into something closer to an I.T. role than a marketing one.
That’s largely because campaigns are being built in the cloud, with segments of data copied from the company’s database. That creates silos of data that don’t talk to one another, so various workarounds have to be employed, often involving a host of third-party solutions to help mimic the results the marketers ultimately want. Each one of those has a learning curve. They require technical expertise to make work correctly. And all the time an email marketer is doing that, they’re taken away from what they’re best at.
There is a better way, though. In the webinar, we’ll discuss some solutions that we think can help make teams more efficient at email. A few of them include …
Get better tech
Don’t let the tail wag the dog. Make sure the tech you sign on to use actually empowers you to do the job you want to do, and doesn’t create more obstacles. Every sales team is likely to tell you they’re the answer to your problem, so it’s never easy. But do your research. Understand what it is you’re buying. Your tech stack should make things easier for you. If it doesn’t, don’t resist change.
Fight for budget
Related to the above, if you’re going to get the right tech stack in place, you need to have the budget space to do it. So, prepare your case. Know what it is you need, what it costs, and — most importantly — what it can save you. That’s in both money and manpower. Then, once you get it, allocate it smartly. Our research found that 74% of email marketers who said they spent half or more of their time on operational tasks were part of teams that put less than half their marketing budget into email. Money isn’t everything, but it makes a difference.
Stop settling
There’s more to email marketing than being a button pusher. You likely know that. So don’t settle into an operational job you don’t want to do, and doesn’t serve your team well. It’s burning people out. It’s not efficient. It doesn’t have to be this way. Demand more.
If you’d like to learn more about why email marketing isn’t as efficient as it needs to be, and what you can do about it — along with getting a sneak peek at our new, exclusive research — register for our free webinar (July 31, 2 p.m. EDT).