Forrester Research recently released "Your Email Marketing Road Map For 2009," which promises to be the first report in a series titled "How To Improve Email In 2009." I love reading Forrester's new reports because they offer a view on the industry that is otherwise tough to see, providing insights from both the customer and solution provider sides.Without exposing too many of the details – which Forrester gets paid for – here are three key principles:
- Marketers have largely ignored innovation in email marketing, over the last 10(ish) years
- Traditionally, service and technology partners only pushed the envelope on features and capabilities enough to remain slightly ahead of marketers
- There are clear points email marketers must be hitting to adapt to consumers; and, now services and technology are available for marketers to take the next critical steps
Julie Katz, who authors the report, then fills in some gaps with “Ten Ways Email Marketers Can Get More From Their Programs Today.” Both reports are worthwhile, and can be found here (if you have a subscription).
What Forrester does exceedingly well is inform the process of digital marketing, getting inside access to leading organizations, and intelligently compiling and disseminating information from a broad universe of thinkers and doers.
However, I have some argument with a premise implied with the “Road Map” title. It provides the landmarks and waypoints – which are important – but does not include the turn-by-turn directions. Despite the title, this report is hardly, truly a road map.
For reports and analyses like this I will read through a second time, through the eyes of my clients, and many of those I have known in the past or met and talked with in recent years. I try to understand much of the frustration that is felt in marketing departments across North America, saddled with the day-to-day grind. This is the marketer struggling to accomplish their day-to-day goals, or the VP trying to initiate a change of course. Each simply trying to communicate their brand’s promise to the consumer at large, effectively, within their corporate framework.
For these marketers, information from Forrester is something like God appearing to Moses in the burning bush. It is pretty impressive and convincing at the face of it, no doubt, but ultimately really difficult to translate practically, once you come back down from the mountain. Burning bushes just don’t jive when you suddenly remember how things really are out there: limited or shrinking resources and budgets, internal logistics for altering or replacing contracts, colleagues who share responsibilities but can’t be bothered to lift a thumb, and so on.
Fortunately for Moses, he was provided those big stone tablets, inscribed with some practical applications. So he could swing by the water cooler and pull out the road map and say, “Here’s how you live, here’s where you want to go, and here’s what you need to steer clear of.”
What this means is you will have to draw the road map. You will have to put together the turn-by-turn directions that will get you between the waypoints Forrester identifies, and all the way to the landmark on the horizon. This will have to be a practical, applicable map to guide a team through the wilderness.
On Wednesday I will continue with more details on the critical components of an Email Marketing road map, and how to get started drawing it out for your organization.
