Maria Piscopo has another great article in Communication Arts (if you don’t subscribe, you should) and it is also available online. This one is about email marketing and it makes some very important points–like that you have to offer something more than just a promo to make it work best for your business.
3 Replies to “Email Marketing”
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An insiders view:
I got a call from a good friend yesterday. “What the hell kind of list did I get on?” Evidently his email in-box was being swamped with mail from Photographers all of a sudden; like, one day nothing and the next day: zowie. Coincidently, I was looking at AdBase the day before and remarked to myself, “[self] what is John’s name doing on the art director’s list?” See …. I know he’s not an art director and I made a mental note for no good reason at the time.
Well … I told him to go to AdBase and get his name removed. Guess what? The mails stopped almost as quickly as they started. Crazy huh? True story.
Interesting…does your friend work for a company that licenses photography at all? If so, then I’m not as concerned as I might be because the photographers may have done enough homework to know that his company might be a good match for their services (still, it’s good he called and got off the list).
Unfortunately, though, too many photogs don’t do enough research and, instead, send blindly to pre-selected lists offered by companies like Adbase (i.e., companies tagged as appropriate for broad swaths of photogs like “lifestyle photographers”) rather than building their own researched lists (using list services to get the names, emails, etc. at the end of the process). That would also potentially contribute to his receipt of a slew of e-promos.
First step, targeting. Always targeting.
-Leslie
The company my friend works for is listed as “frequently” using photography but upon examining their portfolio of work it’s fairly clear they don’t hire outside the local market; it’s not photo centric work if you know what I mean.
It’s obvious that all or -at least – most of those blasting him didn’t do their homework. Since it’s so easy to send an email, the shotgun approach is obviously very popular.