Scenario 1 - What's wrong with e-mail blasts?

[Linda_Stinson]

Your client (or peer) Joe Marketer states that since there is no cost per message with Adobe Campaign, the best way to increase sales is to send every e-mail campaign to every contact in the data mart. Do you agree with him? Please argue for or against this approach, both from a business perspective (what impact this approach will have on your sales) and from a technical perspective (what impact it will have on your reputation/deliverability).

[Dave_Post]

This does not answer your question which is an important one.  But as an aside in the direct mail marketing world there are obvious natural costs to a poor marketing strategy.  In the physical world such poor marketing strategy as you describe would result in the company soon being out of business because there is a tangible cost per message.  In the direct mail marketing world marketers have to be more sophisticated in their use modeling tools.  Thus, in direct mail marketing the use of statistical models that result in things like Gain Charts and Lift Charts are essential to staying in business.  In general I have found that digital marketers have gotten very lazy with what they think is "no cost per message".  In fact everything we do has a cost/risk as economists such as Ronald Coase and Harry Markowitz have shown.

Put another way if Joe Marketer is correct then the cost would be that he should lose his job since to follow his advice does not require an employer to pay for a marketer to make that decision.  I am very interested to hear what others have to say about specific reasons why Joe is wrong and any business examples they might be able to share.

[toddlukowski · Accepted solution]

I'd be very concerned about customer fatigue...customization and relevancy will lead to better results in terms of reactivity and opt-ins.  Once customers catch on to the fact that they are getting very general content that doesn't apply to them, it becomes very easy to tune out or unsubscribe. 

[Michele_Key]

It's concerning that Joe has no overall strategy for his email customers. No 'cost' does not take into account designing/deploying/tracking/reporting on email campaigns as well. A fundamental lack of customization and segmentation will skew the results of an email campaign as well.

I would suggest targeting a select group of customers/prospects for more relevant results!

[Linda_Stinson]

Karen Haas: risk of alienation - via marking as spam, or unsubscribe

Todd Lukowski: one point i omitted from on site reply...blasts make it harder to get a good read on results

Dave Post: ISPs can block you if you bulk email

[Linda_Stinson]

During an instructor-facilitated session today, Samantha mentioned another drawback of e-mail blasts. They make it harder to test your campaign results and analyzed what worked or didn't work in terms of a targeting strategy.