Relevant content is a must……..
Once again I find myself in the space where I am confused and bemused by the number of “leading” brands in South Africa that employ a shotgun approach to their digital media marketing efforts. I am amazed that these brands still cannot get the basics of targeted advertising correct. It seems that they take the same campaigns deployed in the mass media and think by adding a name that somehow this has now become a direct marketing piece. They then pat themselves on the back when they get a <3% return. I cannot understand this logic.
Relevance has to be the watch word here. You cannot go to market, with a personalised piece unless you believe that the intended recipient will find it relevant. If you send material to a person, even if they have opted in, and it is not relevant you are wasting time and money. They will not consume it and you may also be harming your brand significantly. Fundamentally as a marketing organisation you need to invest heavily in segmentation and content, ensuring that you send your target audience relevant and actionable pieces.
As with all of my posts, this too has come out of experience. As a marker I subscribe to many different feeds (and email marketers). I segment these based on my interests, on competitor activity and then the rest. I find many organisations who simply do not give a stuff about the content they send out. I get emails from one organisation that provides training. I have in fact been on a few of their courses and have sent a number of my staff of their courses. They sent me an email today on how to become a more effective PA (huh)? They have just earned themselves and unsubscribe and perhaps worse still they may lose business as a result.
I was in a meeting the other day where the person said that email marketing is cheap and we can send out 10 times the numbers of pieces that we send out via the post. They would be correct on the cost, but their evaluation of the situation seems fundamentally flawed. SPAM filters are knocking just about everything into left field now and their one size fits all approach will ultimately cause them to fail.
Stop prostituting your brand and invest in the correct segmentation and content creation. Don’t be fooled by the numbers – just talk to shopping mall owners out there, they will tell you, the seagulls out number the purchasers by 1000 to 1.
Some food for thought maybe?
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