The emergence of social media, smartphones and tablets has redefined the marketing industry, but where does this leave the list-rental market – does it still have a place?
First of all, it would be somewhat naïve to insist that all is rosy in list rental. A decade of abuse and addiction to aggressively seeking profits at any cost has left the industry in bad shape and we’re still feeling its ill-effects in plummeting response rates.
However, all is not lost, there are still healthy profits to be had, but only to those companies which can prise themselves away from the bad practices of the past and take a much more strategic and long-term approach, balancing the consumer’s, client’s and business’ needs. One of the biggest areas for improvement is customer care, both in terms of the end consumer and the relationships between supplier and clients.
Successful email communication is a science and a channel that needs significant nurturing in order to optimise the profits clients habitually expect when they first test the medium.
You can’t achieve this if both suppliers and clients have a ‘stack it high’, profiteering mentality – like not knowing the difference between bad profits (rinsing a relationship) and good profits (the rewards of a delighted customer relationship). Rather than leading clients up the garden path with promises of guaranteed response rates, data owners have a duty to manage expectations even if this means risking the business or sale.
Best practice is always the first thing to be compromised by the less reputable and unsophisticated list rental suppliers, with increased volume, rather than improved quality, being seen as the answer to declining response rates. Such practice is simply not sustainable and is short-sighted in the extreme. This has to change.
Best practice must come to the fore if improved click-through rates, increased conversions and higher ROI are to be achieved. This means asking each recipient to confirm their willingness to receive commercial emails (opt-in) and restricting the number of times each recipient can be contacted (frequency capping) to avoid over-exposure.
As an industry we need to think about new ways of adding value outside of just generating a specific response. Social media and mobile may be becoming the dominant channels, but they should be used to complement email marketing rather than being seen as a direct replacement for it. One recent study revealed that 67% of consumers check their emails on their phones, so mobile-email has the potential to provide a rich, new home for the list rental market. Likewise, marketers need to think about ways in which social sharing functionality can be incorporated into their communications and how they can facilitate customer response in more than one channel.
Customer acquisition will also be on companies’ agendas, we just need to make sure list rental is too.
Barney Willis is director of media UK at eCircle
