At the close of MediaPost’s Email Insider Summit, a four day whirlwind of island events and ardent discussions on email, I sat at the famed Mucky Duck in downtown Captiva Island and reflected on the conference. Throughout panel discussions and roundtables on relevance, preference centers, testing, content marketing, and my own panel on email security, the humanity behind email shined through. Here are some highlights from a few of the people who made the event a success:
On Content Marketing
Joe Pulizzi demonstrated how brands can acquire and keep customers by creating and publishing their own content. A slide from his presentation stated, “73% of consumers prefer to get information from a company in the form of a collection of helpful articles over an advertisement or offer. 61% are more likely to buy.” Content should be focused more on the customer and less on the brand.
On Customer Lifetime Value
Arthur Middleton Hughes described how to calculate Customer Lifetime Value over a three year period in email and include offline sales that occur as a result of email. Emails cause people to take action in the same way tv commercials or billboards might. Email departments should use this metric to justify budgets and also to consider the value of customers who unsubscribe, so they can fight to keep them. Another key to acquiring customers is getting the email team and the website team together to optimize new email signups.
On Preference Centers
The panel on real-time marketing discussed adapting to customer behavior and priority inbox technology to improve engagement and relevant segmentation. Preference centers allow consumers an alternative to unsubscribe as well as a way to define how they interact with your brand. Loren McDonald wrote an excellent follow up article on preference centers here.
On Security
Members of my own panel on data security, Dennis Dayman and Allen Nance, discussed the need for marketers to self-regulate and read OTA’s “Security by Design” framework. Legislation has been focused around privacy and compliance, but there have not been nearly as many regulations passed specifically on marketing data and how it is secured. Email addresses are valuable and should be treated with the same sensitivity as PII and healthcare data. An annual security audit between a brand and an ESP is a good place to start. Getting the entire organization to embrace a data-sensitive culture is crucial.
On Being Human
Go off topic once in a while in your content and marketing stratgey. Phil Hollows from the final panel of the conference reminds brands that it’s not natural for people to talk about the same thing every day, and you can get a lot of mileage by just talking to your audience in a real way. While immediate results and conversions are important, it’s also about being memorable and engaging enough to differentiate from the competition and create a real, human connection.
Last 5 posts by Cari Birkner
- Data Stewardship 101: Security by Design from the OTA - April 21st, 2011
- Gmail Adds List Unsubscribe Feature- But Does Google Know When a Best Practice Can Turn Evil? - July 24th, 2009
- Profiles in Email Laws: India's IT Act Amendment - July 3rd, 2009
- Profiles in Email Laws: Austria's EU Opt-In Regime - February 25th, 2009
- Australia's Right to Receive Rules - January 26th, 2009
I certainly enjoyed reading it, you may be a great author.