
Marketers these days must be able to show returns and justify the investment in new email technology. At the MarketingSherpa summit Diana Primeau, Director of Member Services, CNET, gave a presentation during the Email Summit 2015 technology panel.
During her presentation, she spoke about how, in order to justify your investment in new technology, a Need must be identified and clearly presented.
To do this, your team must have:
- Need identified
- Alignment within the organization
- Key metrics
- Defined goals and objectives
Here is the video:
Organisational alignment is key
According to Primeau alignment plays an important role because without the organisation understanding the value or the role email plays: “you’re going to have a hard time getting that investment.”
Often, internal communication is the place marketers should start. C-level support is also important, so marketers must show their accomplishments to management so to gain trust for a new direction and technology investment.
Adequate research and forethought into this new email marketing technology investment and implementation, means these three topics are covered:
- Final requirements
- Demos and interviews
- Financial justification
Prepair for meeting Email Providers
Marketers need to come prepared when speaking to email providers. That means having a requirement list ready and having spoken with qualified experts and marketers beforehand, so they know which partners might be best-fit.
The more in-depth meetings can start once you have it down to three to five potential partners. Here you go in-depth, but don’t assume anything.
Diana Primeau: “In the beginning we experienced a lot of canned demos, where they just go in and show the same thing over and over again. Really consider what your use cases are, and ask them to prepare demos that solve your problems”
Integration is an issue many marketers overlook, so getting engineers involved early on is essential. Another overlooked issue is a cultural fit.
“When you’re working with an ESP, you’re building a long-term relationship … if you’re not getting along and the relationship doesn’t feel good, it’s probably not going to be a good cultural fit for you going forward,” she said.
Source Marketingsherpa Email summit