Adventures in Mobile Marketing

Lunch Workshop: CMO’s Talk

MailChimp at Email Insider Summit
Great lunchtime talk hosted by ExactTarget, on “No Executive Left Behind: Ten Things Your C-Suite Must Know About Email NOW,” with four panelists, Jaffe (Join the Conversation), Bloxham (Ball State Univ.), Castellini (CareerBuilder) & Stewart (Exact Target). My favorite session so far, probably, because it was the most honest. Let’s face it, a lot of things have changed since the conference was planned- so it’s hard to have a super relevant talk. The landscape is different, and we’re all heading into the next year with a feeling of “what’s next.” Each session talked about how money is flowing from direct marketing and advertising/pr/media into email. What is the result? “It will be horrible,” says Bloxham. You’ll get more people contending for real estate on your newsletter, more demands to increase frequency, and more people just wanting to be a chef in the kitchen.

They complained about email still being cornered by the email department, instead of being truly integrated with the entire marketing strategy. Joffe had a unique example, how Amex asked him to bid on an ideal trip, and he chose a trip to Paris for $10K. Amex then emailed him later saying “Dear cardmenber, you did not win.” He explained that not only could they have gotten his name right, but told him how much the winning bid was, pitch him on concierge services in Paris, etc. This example spoke to all the speakers who, like Bloxham, said that whoever did that email marketing campaign should not get work in the future (from him).

The best part, by far, was how email is positioned well to understand social marketing, as we already get metrics, ROI, valuation and viral elements. Though, notably, not from the earlier example! Not sure who siad it, but I think it’s great: “email will get social before social gets social.” (small bit of doubt here whether it was “email will get social before social gets email, but it’s much more meaningful the other way.)

Funny moment when the speakers were berating us, “Why are you all email marketers! Why arent’ there any non-email marketers here?” and my neighbor leans over and whispers. “It’s too damn expensive.” The point the speakers were trying to make is that “email is too important to be done by emailers.” Which lead to how a great harmony would be the social marketer and the emailer (as emailers aren’t social animals… what??).

Very good point by Joffe, that email is ubiquitous in organizations and to have an “email department” is largely anachronistic. Everything we do is via email in almost all online services.

This got a lot of buzz on the #eis twitterstream: the common acceptance of the definition of spam as “whatever [the consumer/recipient] doesn’t want.” the folks at my table- Dylan Boyd, Jeff Mills, and DJ Waldow- all nodded knowingly, but some folks on Twitter were shocked. I think that disconnect is the one between, what we have to acknowledge to conform to CAN-SPAM as well as what we truly understand as consumer behaviors. If it’s old, irrelevant, or uninteresting, users call it spam.

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Written on Monday, 08. December 2008 at 13:51 In the category EmailSummit MailChimp. Follow the comments via RSS here: RSS-Feed. Read the Comments. Trackbacks- Trackback on this post. Share on FriendFeed

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