Marketing - email & the Web
May 30th, 2004 by Bill
I was thinking this morning about how many things I’ve bought on the Web over the years and, even more so, how many products I have bought generally, both on and off the Web, where I have submitted an e-mail address. And I realized how few of those companies I’ve provided an e-mail address to use it to sell their products. Of those that do, the vast majority do it poorly.
Yet I see ads for those companies on TV and in print where, for me as a consumer, they have the least impact (even though they are more costly to produce for those companies). Off the top of my head, an obvious example is Microsoft. Over the years I’ve bought a great many Microsoft products, as have most people. Still, they don’t leverage the very medium many of their products centre around.
Is it that they simply don’t know how to do it? I don’t know. But if this observation is accurate and they aren’t using it, or aren’t using it well, how do the people in charge of the marketing keep their jobs?
Just wonderin’ … By the way, the only company I’ve come across that ever used e-mail and the Web well, from a marketing perspective, is Amazon. And even they seem a little directionless these days.
Wait a moment … I just thought: Seth Godin appears to be using it brilliantly. I don’t how the numbers work out - like traffic, conversions, ROI etc. - but it strikes me that he leverages everything - the Web, e-mail, seminars, etc. - to sell his books and services.
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