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1 in 5 Email Marketers Wasting $$…it’s the VP’s fault
Most businesses do not know how to support new media efforts internally. New statistics (that back up old hunches) indicate the breadth of money being wasted in email marketing alone.
What you don’t see in the graph above is how many of the 82% of companies that do track their campaigns, track them poorly…very poorly.
If you help run a company as a VP, CEO, or CMO you need to make sure that you fully understand this list that I’ve put together below.
This is a list of ideas that are absolutely necessary for any modern day business leader to understand:
- New media marketing requires more than sticking an intern on the internet and saying ‘GO.’
- If you are considering the cost of running an email campaign, or online ad campaign, you can’t run the costs the way you want to. Make sure that you define the building, launching, and reporting phases of the project as in-depth people $$, technology $$, strategy $$, and reporting $$. This means that a successful, worthwhile campaign includes allowing people to take their time to put together a brilliant strategy on launch and reporting- so make sure to allow their managers to carve this time out.
- Make sure you train your staff before you attempt one of these campaigns. If this is new to your staff, pay for training. At the very least, buy a book, and give them a few hours to read and bounce thoughts off of you on paper. Training is a touchy subject in general at most corporations as this is usually pushed onto the employee in their off-time. Don’t do it! Your employee will be much more efficient , happier, and less likely to burn out.
- Tracking may require phone calls- leaning on your web-data can be very limited, especially with value-priced email campaigns. Follow up with your clients and train your staff to ask follow up questions while managing future projects and sales efforts.
- Remember what I said earlier with all of those $$ signs? That actually means something:
- People $$ refers to the cost of the employee’s hire, time, and training.
- Technology $$ refers to the tools required to get the job done. This is almost always budgeted as ‘What Vertical Response charges us per email’ but should also consider alternate tracking tools such as analytics on your website or a system to track measurable results to your brand through current projects and future sales efforts.
- Strategy $$ means give the dude/dude-ette some time to think! An email campaign without strategy time built in for your staff will lose far greater value in dollars than the 3 hours that it hurts to watch an employee “strategize” rather than “work.” News: strategy counts as work- make sure they give it their all and give them resources among your staff to gather perspective. You may also budget in here other training and reading required to build a proper strategy, meetings to verify a solid direction, or briefs written up to guarantee perspective.
- Reporting $$ includes the time and money to report on the findings; again this is painful time, and yes you need a fancy PDF report or something to help explain what has happened in the campaign…let your staff create this. It will take at least a few hours for a small campaign.
The hardest part of running these new media campaigns in-house is how painful the process seems to be. It seems unrealistic. “I can barely afford to run the campaign, let alone to buy new software, pay someone to learn it and build in all of this extra time? I need them to do their original job too!”
Then don’t start a new media campaign in-house. Otherwise you’ll fall into the 1 in 5 businesses that fail to learn from their campaigns, placing exorbitant risk on your investment. And I’d put a whopping 70% of the business that track campaigns into a group that track very poorly.
Your options in new media get much brighter (and look more expensive) when you go with a firm that does this for a living. When comparing the costs remember to compare based on outcome. To achieve the same outcome as a new media firm, you’ll have to invest in the people, technology, strategy, and reporting that they do.
