Just like in society where we have a class divide — The Have More’s, The Have’s, and the Have Not’s — there is a class divide in marketing between large enterprises and small to mid-size businesses.

Digital technology and the Internet have totally transformed every aspect of marketing from content creation to analytics. And, each marketing function has multiple skill sets required for effective implementation. This complexity is confronted and mastered with glaring success by large enterprises. But for mid-size and small businesses this complexity makes ROI virtually unattainable.

The real bad news for smaller enterprises is that they are offered limited tools that are sold as marketing solutions. The classic example is in the email marketing arena. Literally dozens of services offer “email marketing” that’s “easy-to-use.” But they tout their ability to tell their users who read their emails, or who clicked on a link as marketing. It’s not.

Every client I’ve ever worked with uses email marketing primarily to either entice a sale or promote attendance at an event. So I ask if they can tell who made a purchase or attended an event based on their email marketing I get the same pause for consideration, followed by a resigned “no” response.

The truth is that email marketing is very effective at enticing sales and promoting events, and you can measure the effectiveness including who actually takes the desired action. But it requires planning, proper configuration of email systems, and personal data collection to happen. These are the things not included in the monthly fee.

I look forward to the emergence of new offerings that fuse professional services with tools and technologies to enable the little guys to step up their marketing game.

A recent study by ForeSee Results shows that social media is a still maturing marketing medium, and that traditional marketing, including email marketing, are preferred.

According to the report, “social media interactions are a main influence for only 5 percent of visitors to retail websites” and “more traditional marketing tactics like promotional emails (19%), search engine results (8%), and Internet advertising (7%), influence more visits to retail websites.”

The report also concludes that traditional marketing techniques like promotional emails influence not only more traffic; they also deliver better-quality traffic. Some of the most satisfied site visitors arrived at a site because of previous familiarity with a brand, receipt of promotional emails, word-of-mouth, and visits to product review websites.

Only 8% of online shoppers said that’s social media was their preferred way to interact with a retailer. A majority want to engage with retailers, but but prefer to do so via email or on retail websites, rather than on social sites. Another key finding is that people are more satisfied with a retailers’ presence on Facebook than they are with Facebook itself.

Visit ForeSeeResults.com for more information or to download the full report.

Engagement
A professional campaign includes the creation of specific web pages and triggered autoresponder emails that provide relevant and current information on the subject matter, as well as the producers, partners, and stakeholders. This is important, as it delivers a turn-key experience that effectively promotes the subject matter, the parties involved, and heightened recipient engagement (ie: registration for updates, RSVP to events, etc.).

Measurable Results
Professional email campaigns make detailed performance metrics accessible including read/open rates, link click rates, and conversion rates. They also create databases of qualified opt-in recipients interested in the subject matter and the offerings of producers, partners, and stakeholders.

Use of professional email marketing practices is often avoided based on three criteria, 1) time requirements, 2) skill requirements and 3) cost. These factors make using a ‘Send Only’ approach the most often used, and is enabled by services like Constant Contact and MailerMailer.

The ‘Send Only’ approach is used most often and is based on the agreement that simply getting a message or promotion viewed is sufficient. This approach fails to consider the impact of the recipients responses when they want more (information, capability, interaction, etc.), but can’t get it.

I hope this helps highlight the value-proposition to using professional email marketing practices as a core tool in your marketing and promotions initiatives. The time and resources required for professional campaign development are time and resources that are well spent.