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Marketing vs. IT: why it doesn’t have to be (and shouldn’t be) that way

February 7, 2012 by Jose Ramon Garcia Layos

I must confess: one of the facts that fascinated me most about email marketing was the complete necessity of balance between the most, a priori, opposite areas of a company: Marketing and IT.

On one end of the spectrum, there is Marketing: the department where terms like reputation, good practices or spam just doesn’t matter. On the other end of the spectrum there is IT, the group of folks that are not even close to understand the meaning of words like acquisition, revenues or ROI.

The paragraph above might seem exaggerated, but actually it isn’t: It’s one of the main reasons for the failure of email marketing in a company.

In order to turn any kind of email marketing program into a success, it’s extremely important to reach a balance between both the business and technical interests.

Let me give you an example: Marketing needs to generate new leads and wants to send out a massive invitation to the whole database which includes a high amount of inactive addresses. To achieve the mentioned complex status called balance of interests, I consider that one has to focus on the following premises – there is no exception.

1. Role-Play: it’s fundamental to put yourself in the other team’s role to understand their motivations. Marketing needs to understand why IT refuses to send this particular campaign where addresses used for the mailing are of weak quality (e.g. without double opt–in procedure). And IT must comprehend what goals marketing wants to achieve by sending out this communication.

2. Make a compromise: in my experience, when you are able to set your own interests aside and look at the bigger picture, it’s often beneficial for everyone involved. Working on valid alternatives for both sides is the best approach. If you manage deliverability in the IT department, the compromise could be that you try mitigate possible damages by proposing to limit the mailing list and to have a strict control over the delivery. If you work in Marketing you could compromise by agreeing on performing the action only with qualitatively high addresses that might show the highest response (e.g. recently acquired leads instead of including also old, inactive addresses).

3. Get conclusions: This balance is not easy to accomplish, so pointing out its benefits for both sides will allow you to work with a higher motivation and predisposition in the future.

Sending emails today is complicated. Delivering them into the inbox is even more complicated. Don’t turn it into something almost impossible by refusing yourself to work with your team!