Email Marketing Innovation: Does it Exist?

Innovation can take on a lot of meanings.  In the tech community it usually means the cutting edge, the newest thing.  When it comes to marketing online the cutting edge can be a great tool.  It can also be a quagmire that will halt your process because instead of creating and delivering a marketing campaign, energy is focused on revising everything to be state of the art. 

As an example people often want to begin email marketing by dissecting how many different groups they believe are necessary to make a customized message.  Segmentation is a valuable thing at the right point in the process but if someone only has 100 people to send to, making 10 categories and 10 customized topics probably isn’t worth the effort.  At that point, time is probably better spent picking up the phone and talking to each person.  Instead of trying to customize a newsletter, start one.  Its OK to start with a general topic because the group is so small it can serve as a sample audience.  As the list grows and you begin to measure what there is an audience for and what is tracking the best results, segmentation is a natural extension.  Segmenting small lists before getting started will make doing your email campaigns exponentially harder, resulting in more effort and/or more money.  The metrics won’t add up and soon the email campaign will be abandoned, a victim of trying to do too much too soon.  Take stock of what step in the process you are on, overcomplicating your campaigns will only cause frustration and overexertion.

– Eric
www.emarketinginnovation.com