E-mail Marketing – The Next-Generation
Up until recently, if you had asked me about e-mail marketing I would have given you a weird look before saying something to the effect of: ‘that horse has left the barn’. Unless of course you were the billionaire from Mexico, Carlos Slim. Then I would say to you: ‘that rice is already cooked.’
I may be old, and I am living proof you can teach an old dog new tricks. My original idea of e-mail was something that you did with a special interest group (SIG) using a 300bd modem to share opinions and insights with like-minded individuals via timeshare on a mainframe.
I along with the rest of the world advanced to PC-based Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). Eventually, AOL came along along with romantic comedy: You’ve Got Mail. Life was good until everyone and their dog had an e-mail account. In an effort to keep up with communication people would change their e-mail accounts, legitimate mail got lost in spam filters and weeding through the junk became a laborious process.
The mainstream press looked at the decline of AOL and the proliferation of pure crap with the electronic inbox and declared the once mighty e-mail as dead as a bit part actor in the original Star Trek. In every episode Doctor McCoy had to in some way tell Captain Kirk the poor son of a bitch is as dead as a door nail.
There was a time where we all just ran to Skype. Alas, the slimy section of marketers followed right along. Certainly, I still use Skype largely as a replacement to that quaint 10 digit numerical ID known as a phone number.
Some folks today use a modification of e-mail with messages being sent to and from Facebook and/or LinkedIn. I find it wonderful for business contacts that I have lost track of over the years. And that is about where it ends. After a couple of exchanges I find myself any other party goes back to the original concept of an e-mail, albeit now a white listed e-mail list.
The reasons for this are several. I for one really do not have complete trust in Facebook. Slimeball marketers have used the social media to collect and harvest e-mail addresses. I know because I have tested with specialized e-mail addresses. Further, I am just not completely ready to put the digital aspects of my personal life in the hands of someone under 30 years old, billionaire or not. Maybe the company will mature and give us straight answers about our privacy rights. I am not holding my breath.
While I have believed in direct e-mail, I have also seen its downside from a management and programming standpoint. My partner was a big believer in a company known as Infusionsoft. I’ve learned a long time ago never to argue with someone when they believe in something. So I stood back.
In hindsight I should have asked him to examine the amount of time he was pouring into this system over the months. I think he would’ve been shocked at what a black hole he had fallen down into.
What I’m not sure of is was his judgment was colored by his personal like of a senior-level person there by the name of Colin. I got to know Colin a little bit and found him to be a nice guy on and offstage. I also know this key player told Infusionsoft a sort of Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
As a curious sidebar, I noticed my partner has not mentioned Infusionsoft in quite some time.
I am comfortable with the fact that sometimes friends are for for a reason, and others are friends for a season. I am not the only one experiencing this.
For whatever reason, even if it is a long season, I can see where it is in my best interests to make new players like emailmarketing.net my new best friend. I am a man on a mission, motivated by mission first, money second. The combination of advanced capabilities combined with ease of use has me understanding Thoroughly Modern Millie. Everything old is new again.
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