Email marketing, which may also related and sits up Customer Relationship Management (CRM), has been the number 1 method for acquisition and retention marketing since email was born, due to its low cost. It is also the easiest contact method for websites, transactions, registration confirmand inquiries.
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), however, has been making email marketing more difficult, due to the requirement for recipients to have explicitly opted in to receive an email, and learning about the law is now essential for anyone dealing with email marketing. A bit about that later.
So what is email marketing? Note: the image below was created by AI, this article is created by a human.
At its basis, Email marketing is the process of selecting data, creating content, and sending emails to a list of multiple contacts, which may range from small numbers to millions (although if you are in the millions and are not a blue chip, you are probably a spammer). Email marketing typically uses a dedicated mass-send platform (an online service as a service provider), where you can send an email to multiple contacts individually, without the entire audience being able to see the other email addresses on the list. Email marketing is subject to law, so must follow the country-specific guidelines for features such as including unsubscribe and privacy links. Yes, you can send an email from Outlook to 50 people with a list of your latest cars in stock, but doing so and following the rules isn’t so easy and how will you know your message has even arrived without tracking? That’s where the dedicated cloud email platforms come in.
So what about the data?
So, as with all CRM activities, everything starts with the data. With no data, there is no one to contact and with no one to contact, there is no one to send anything to.
So where does the data come from?
With tighter regulation, people must have opted in to receive communications from the company you are sending from. This means a real interaction, typically via a tick box on your website or a tick on a post-based communication such as a sales flyer with an offer on it, returned or through a conversation on the phone requesting the opt-in. The most abundant form of data collection is via the website when people sign up to register their interest or to buy. The data is collected in the website database, which may be integrated directly into an email marketing platform or maybe exported separately and entered in a CRM or uploaded manually to an email platform.
The days of buying lists of email contacts for acquiring new customers and leads are over. This was common practice in the old days when less-regulated methods of email collection were used. These days marketers are more reliant on mediums such as social media advertising, PPC advertising (pay-per-click), and content designed to draw individuals in (typically shared on social networks) and picked up by search engines (Google/Bing), by using SEO methods (Search Engine Optimization), when creating their content.
Investigate
To get a better idea of how data is collected, try some of the following for your own research:
1. Sign up to a popular website to study the data collection process and notice the email opt-in and privacy policy requirements.
2. Look through the marketing messages and look in the header and footer of the emails to view information on how the data was collected and associated privacy policies and opt-out links.
3. Search through your unopened ‘junk mail’ – no it’s not junk mail its marketing communications! Make a note of the various contact methods available and if there is a data entry section to collect your details, make a note of the email and related opt-in fields.
4. Phone up a company from a TV Ad and sign up for a charity or order a set of kitchenware! Note the option, when your email details are collected, and what language the phone operator uses to request your permission to opt-in.
5. Go to your local sports shop or DIY outlet and buy something over the counter. Do they ask for your email address?
These are some of the main methods employed to collect your email address. It’s planned, organized, and will be actioned. You will be receiving an email in the next month or so, to get you to buy again. The email address, being a unique identifier can also be readily matched against any data already stored against you and your offline purchase matched against your online purchase data, enriching the intelligence the organization has about you, enabling them to target you with more personal messaging and improving your experience, so you want to buy more, again and again and again.
Email Data Job Roels
So if you are employed to work with email data, you could be in one of the following positions:
1. An email marketing executive or manager – This person will be a dedicated person in a business or agency, that will be responsible for handling part or all of the email process. They may be simply sent lists of email contacts already processed by a marketing or person or ‘data bod’ or they may be responsible for maintaining the data themselves. More professional approaches have data stored on an email platform where lists can be segmented into more targeted lists, using the tools available on the platform itself. A simple example would be selecting an age and gender range to target an offer on a clothing item, such as a pair of Ski goggles for women.
2. A CRM manager – This person will be responsible for managing the company’s CRM. The CRM is typically a cloud-based database solution with a web-based portal for managing all the company’s contacts and transaction history outside of any live website environment. Examples are Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics