Email marketing needs a new approach

Today I was at the annual Email Marketing Conference of the UK’s Direct Marketing Association. There were several interesting facts revealed during the day, but several speakers echoed a single theme. They were clear that email marketing is not like other forms of direct marketing. Instead, it is much more like publishing. That means focusing on the specific needs of each target audience and then providing them with editorial that is engaging. Only then can you entice them with any offer. The speakers at the conference spoke as though this were some radical change which required strategic alteration. Yet that’s plainly not the case. Any good marketer, whether using direct mail, advertising or email, will tell you that all you need to do is provide what your audience wants, at the right time, in the right way, at the right price. In other words the “rules” for email marketing are no different to any other kind of marketing. So it’s about time the marketing industry stopped pretending otherwise.