Many companies risk losing subscribers because they fail to consolidate internal email operations. Here's how and why to make that change.

I recently read an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal about the selection process for the coxswain for the U.S. Olympic rowing team. One of the competitors for the job had a bit of a problem at the World Championships in Japan in the final seconds of an early heat. The U.S. boat was ahead with 500 meters to go when the Italian team began to catch up. The coxswain responded to this by instructing the eight-man crew, "Blades up. Legs down. Speed through." As the article noted, "He wasn't supposed to. 'Speed through' tells a crew to angle its oars so they cut through water faster, raising the stroke count. He should have said, 'Power,' ordering the same number of strokes, only stronger ones."

The result was a near disaster. Half the crew followed his direction, and the other half continued to do what they knew they should be doing at that point in the race. The U.S. just barely managed to hold on and win the race.

So what does this have to do with emarketing? More than you might think! In a world where no two marketers seem to have the same structure for planning and implementing their campaigns, many of the clearly ad-hoc structures in place make the creation of successful programs harder rather than easier. Marketers should adopt a simple, integrated process for implementing emarketing. In other words, get everyone rowing together!

Think about it for a second: Most marketers who develop television or print advertising share a similar structure. They tend to have a marketing organization that develops the advertising, usually with consultation from a line of business owners such as product managers. Sure, variations exist, but typically, these are differences of degree. Moreover, the marketing group tends to own a wide range of (offline) marketing tactics that include direct mail, out-of-home and radio in addition to TV and print.

Now, contrast the mostly tidy structure of offline marketing program creation with the myriad approaches for emarketing. At many companies, the marketing organization will manage online advertising (display and search) while the technology organization will manage the website and email designed to drive traffic to the website. This arrangement makes integration of the e-channels difficult because marketing and technology may not share the same goals or even the same building.

In other companies, multiple line-of-business managers have the authority to send out email without the need to coordinate with other managers. Under this arrangement, the consumer might receive multiple emails from the same company within the same time frame, creating confusion and mixed messages.

Lastly, new and emerging media -- the Twitters of the world -- often fall through the cracks because no single organization has the overall responsibility for them. Companies may miss great opportunities to reach their consumers simply because of ambiguity.

Divided emarketing responsibilities generally stems from two causes: novelty and low cost. Obviously, companies have created campaigns in other media for decades or more, so processes for creating those campaigns have evolved. But the low cost of implementing marketing in the e-channel means that the budget for these tactics may sit in the line-of-business hierarchy. In other words, some non-marketing personnel may make the decision to implement a tactic such as email marketing without using formal corporate marketing channels.

Lack of coordination for emarketing means more than confused consumers or missed opportunities; it can mean lost business. Consider the multiple email sender example mentioned above. In a 2007 survey by Marketing Sherpa, half of consumers defined SPAM as email "that arrives too frequently." Now, imagine that half of a company's email list gets sick of getting one email from product group A, one email from product group B and one email from product group C each week. If all of those annoyed customers hit the SPAM button or otherwise unsubscribed from that company's email, the resulting loss of potential revenue would be staggering.

So, how should a company organize its emarketing efforts?

First off, the company needs to designate an overall emarketing manager. Think of this person as your coxswain. He or she will probably, but not necessarily always, sit in the marketing department. For instance, in ecommerce-focused companies, the emarketing manager may be part of the ecommerce staff, since revenue will ultimately determine the success or failure of emarketing efforts.

As with any marketing decision, the process starts with the development of meaningful and reasonable goals. The company must define what it hopes to achieve with emarketing. Here are some realistic goals:

• Create more leads
• Drive more sales
• Increase brand loyalty

Naturally, most organizations will have more complex goals than those listed above, but the defined goals should be equally clear and well-understood.

With defined goals in mind, the emarketing manager should then determine the roles and priorities of other stakeholders. Obviously, product managers and other line-of-business managers need to provide input and/or final approval, depending on company practice. However, information technology will undoubtedly play a role in anything pertaining to the website given the need for reliability and security. The emarketing manager needs to define that role for the sake of sanity.

As marketers experience greater pressure to more narrowly target consumers, they are finding that information technology has become a necessary component in delivering high return on campaign investments. The reliance on information technology is a result of the need for truly integrated marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

The actual implementation of an emarketing organization involves more delicate decisions, such as assigning responsibilities to specific individuals and, inevitably, taking responsibilities away from others. These decisions are not easy. However, marketers must make these decisions bravely to stem the potential chaos of unmanaged emarketing efforts. After all, no one wants to be passed by a competitor right at the finish line!

Chris Marriott is general manager, NY and London, for Acxiom Digital.