The mind of the email marketer

For many years I have been actively involved in creating a community for email marketers. For five years starting in 2005 I moderated a listserv for email professionals called The Inbox Insiders and in 2010 I launched Only Influencers, a curated community for those passionate about digital marketing.

Over those years, it has been driven home to me on a daily basis that email marketers are a breed apart. There is a sense of passion, and a willingness to share that I’ve rarely seen in other marketing channels. Perhaps it is the fact that email marketers often have to defend themselves against a world that often sees all email marketing as spam, there is a great sense of camaraderie among the email marketing community that I think is unique.

Who are these people that are so passionately dedicated to their chosen field? In my daily interactions with some of the best and brightest the field has to offer, I’ve noticed certain traits that are shared by all. I call it The mind of the email marketer.

Trait #1: Love of immediate gratification
Let’s face it, things like social media marketing, search engine marketing, and buying media placements are all important marketing channels, but success is measured over months and fiscal quarters. But email marketing is different: success or failure of a campaign is immediate. It’s measured in minutes and starts as soon as you hit the “send button”.

Tim Watson, founder of Zettasphere, when asked why he is an email marketer, adds “…most of all the thrill of seeing the revenue roll in immediately after the send. I actually think the email campaign “send button” should be renamed the “send me revenue” button.”

Andrew Kordek, co-founder of email agency Trendline Interactive, says: It’s “the adrenaline rush and addictive drug of pushing the button and seeing things (clicks, opens, site traffic, registrations, conversions) in real/near real time.”

Trait #2: Love of testing
Email marketers share the direct marketer’s love of testing. Which subject line generates a higher open rate? Which graphic (or no graphic) generates a click? Which call to action is the strongest and how many calls to action should I have? What is the most effective win-back campaign? Everything a marketer needs to generate a higher ROI is immediately available by A/B testing sample portions of your mailing list.

Rosanna Picillo, database manager for National Instruments, says: “I like the ability to quickly and reliably see cause and effect via testing. It’s a nice blend of art and science.”

Trait #3: Love of data
Email marketers love to dig into the data. Bob Frady, director of email marketing for Zeeto Media, says (tongue in cheek): “I think it’s all a keen desire to create pivot tables.”

Samantha Iodice, manager of email practice at Aspen Marketing Services, says: “…for me, it combines my analytical side with my creative leanings and I can use more of my knowledge and experience without having to choose just one direction.”

Data is everything to the email marketer because there is so much to test: creative, subject lines, offer, call to action. And all these things must be weighed against deliverability: black listing, IP reputation and a myriad of other technical issues unrelated to marketing. It is the love of keeping all of these balls afloat, the appeal of both the right brained creative side and the left brained analytical mind needed to sift through all the changing data that epitomises the mind of the Email Marketer.

Karen Talavera, who trains email marketers as founder of Synchronicity Marketing, has this to say: “To a died-in-the-wool marketer it's the ideal channel for exercising both the creative and analytical muscles – and making a real difference in performance through either or both dimensions. Or, for the person who is either wholly left- or right-brain oriented, working in email provides fertile ground to dive deep either analytically or creatively. That juicy intellectual playground is what keeps email fun and makes me passionate about it.”

The blend of right and left brain expertise, love of data, impatience with anything but immediate results, camaraderie, the willingness to share with their peers, the love of incremental improvement and refinement, passion and most of all, FUN.

These are things that every email marketer I’ve ever met shares.

Bill McCloskey, founder, OnlyInfluencers.com

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