Acceleration's London director reports on email's evolution, and what you need to do to stay ahead of the curve.

Email has come a long way since the days when buying an opt-in list and making the recipients an offer was considered the "killer app." Sophisticated marketers now know that email's true potential lies in its ability to unlock the value hidden in their precious databases. It is in this area where we have seen significant developments over the past few years.  

In the bad old days, we simply blasted a single email message to our entire database and hoped it worked. Sure, we measured and tested, but we were always a little disappointed with the results. And as email became less of a novelty and more of an annoyance, our results became even more disappointing.

As the technology evolved, so did our approach. We started segmenting our databases and customising our offers and content to specific customer segments. We went further by trying to time our customised messages to reach recipients when we felt they would be most receptive.

We started to see some ROI from this approach, but it was time consuming, prone to human error, and largely static. People's needs change fast-- a lot faster than the profile fields we captured at the point of opt-in allow for. While this approach was a vast improvement on what came before, it too, is now part of email history. 

Today, our email programmes must be built around the real needs of our customers and prospects. Not what we think their needs are, or what we think their needs will be in three months time, but what their actual needs are today. This means that we must listen to them. All day and every day. Whether we like it or not, the power has shifted-- as marketers, we are no longer in control, consumers are ,and they prove it to us everyday within our ROI metrics. 

Only once we acknowledge this shift in power and modify our behavior to embrace it will we reach the point where our messages are welcomed into our customers' and prospects' inboxes. Then we'll not be using email to flog our products; we'll be using it to respond to a specifically identified, real and immediate need. And at that point we are no longer selling, our customers are buying.

All this makes good sense-- but is it really achievable? As with anything complex, the way to achieve it is to break it down into small, manageable tasks. Although each marketer will face some unique challenges, the tasks below are a very good place to start: 

1. We go back to basics, and segment our databases into useful segments, ensuring that mechanisms are in place for customers/prospects to move between segments as their situation and needs change. Databases are living entities and need to respond to the changing needs and desires of our customers. 
2. Then we define the appropriate strategy for each segment. If we have segmented properly, the required strategy will be self evident -- it will be based on what we want to achieve from each segment -- conversion, retention, deeper share of pocket, re-activation, etc.
3. Then we breathe life into the strategy, and apply it to each individual in our segments. This is the important bit, and the key is to listen to what our customers and prospects are telling us. To do this effectively, our email platform must be in tune with what our other client-side systems (databases, web analytics programmes etc) are telling us every day. The technology to do this is out there-- it's just a case of setting it up.
4. With the necessary integration in place, we start defining each and every Business Event that any of our customers/prospects might trigger on our website on any particular day. The place to start is to think of every event we can capture that might tell us something about the state of mind of our customer. At the simplest end of the spectrum, it might be a registration, while at the more sophisticated end, it might be an individual who has gone through 4 stages of a check-out process, but failed to complete the final stage. Don't leave anything out-- we can always whittle this list down.
5. Then we listen to what each Business Event is telling us about our customers' needs and desires, and define an appropriate response to each. The "appropriate responses" become our Business Rules. To be effective, they need to define both the content and timing of the response.
6. The simplest way to deliver this in practice is to develop a Messaging Matrix, our segments (and related strategies) mapped across the horizontal axis, and our Business Events down the vertical. Then what naturally fills in at each point of intersection are our Business Rules.
7. With the Messaging Matrix defined, we turn attention to our creative messaging. Any email platform worth its salt will be able to build the message content dynamically. With the sophisticated rule set defined above, it's a relatively simple process to extend this into rules for building and deploying creative on the fly.

With the hard work done, it is key is to ensure that all these processes are automated from the outset. All too often I have seen sophisticated programs, which seem manageable at the outset, spiral out of control when the program scales up. Automation from the outset means one can confidently build a program without fear of resource or administration nightmares in the future.

Sure it's a bit of work up-front, but once defined, automated and deployed, marketers can get back to being marketers, and focus on the important business of delivering results, rather than scrambling to keep up with the administrative needs of an email programme.

Grant Keller is a London-based director of Acceleration, and drives the company's growth in Europe.  His passion and experience in online marketing helps clients unlock the value of today's technology.

Keller began his career in traditional advertising and worked at FBC and Ogivly & Mather in South Africa for six years. In 1999, Keller helped to found Acceleration before moving to London in 2001, where he continued his digital career working at eM&C Saatchi and Publicis Dialog. Keller returned to Acceleration in 2004, when he established the company's London office.