SALE: Get your E-marketer now! Only £9,99!

Congratulations you are our 1,000,000th visitor, click here to see what you have won”. For years these kinds of pop-ups, unwanted newsletters and other spam were synonyms for E-marketing. Nowadays these irritating messages are almost extinguished and only remind us of the horror of web 1.0.

In those days you only needed a large database of e-mails and basic html knowledge to be successful on the internet. Luckily courts around the world judged and barred these pirates of the early internet. Adapt or die.

Thanks to online discussion forums companies think twice when applying e-marketing strategies, an upset consumer can easily influence hundreds of peers. On the other hand, companies have more resources for effective targeting than ever before. Booming websites and applications where a lot of user details are publically shared such as Amazon.com, Facebook, eBay, MySpace, … provide a massive amount of data. Webtraffic became also increasingly measurable so return-on-investment rates are just a few clicks away.

Marketing departments all over the world are preparing a war over the consumer, online. By the end of 2009 an average of 10% of the total marketing budget spend by global corporations will be allocated to e-marketing. To feed this war build-up companies are desperately recruiting youngsters who are familiar with the latest internet buzz and know the principles of marketing. Kids born with IPods in their ears who are 24/7 on the WWW browsing the blogosphere are hot.

Not often a blog writer is offered a quite impressive job such as Kris Hoet of ‘cross the breeze, who actually takes care of blogger relations for Microsoft in Europe. Off course, recruiting hobby-bloggers to develop marketing strategies is far from ideal. E-marketing is gaining so much importance that the subject should be taught at higher education level.

The question remains which profile an e-marketer should have. Off course he needs to be aware of the latest trends on the web. And yes, as a member of the marketing division he should know his P’s. Mix that with some technical and graphical knowledge such as flash, adobe, xhtml, java,… and you will come close finding your perfect e-marketer.

So, it seems that an e-marketer must be a multi skilled person huh? That is exactly how one should be trained: with a wide look on business environment. Ideally, students of all different business disciplines need to be mixed up and work in groups. Consequently, computing students get to know advertising strategies and marketing students learn that not all of their ideas are technically feasible.

Let’s take a look to some fine examples of e-marketing in various industries. Off course, e-marketing is mainly used in a B2C context. The good-things-should-never-end campaign of Orange, the Axe chocolatizer facebook-application, the ikea dreamkitchen, …But also non-profit organisations apply e-marketing in a very clever way. Or what to think of this Unicef campaign?

References:
Time magazine (2009) First E-marketing, Now E-research [online] available from <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,995937,00.html> [Monday, Jan. 24, 2000]
The Guardian (2009) Expert panel Q&A: E-commerce [online] available from <http://www.guardian.co.uk/royal-mail-growing-your-business/expert-panel-e-commerce> [Tuesday November 18 2008 ]
AllBusiness (2009) Trend Watch: The importance of E-marketing [online] available from <http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/4283264-1.html> [Friday, December 1 2000]
Article Alley (2009) Importance of Internet Marketing Education [online] available from <http://www.articlealley.com/article_745355_81.html> [09th January 2009]

Adapt or die.

“Adapt or die, that’s the unofficial motto of the Internet.” (Edelman)

How many, so called great websites went down in recent months. Not only is there MySpace, a website growing beyond the control of its builders, but also SecondLife, not to mention other once so successful stories.

We don’t have to spend too much time chatting about MySpace. When it first came off, it was an instant success. People could add their profile, keep in touch with their friends, upload music and so on. But it was the success that meant the failure in the end. The builders had no clear vision of where they were heading to. The website kept growing, more and more companies got involved and sponsored messages became the biggest deal in MySpace-land. Younger people soon realized this was not what they wanted – it lost its ‘coolness’ – and went on searching for other communicational websites. This meant of course the success of Facebook. So far the only negative aspect of this website is that you can not (yet?) personalize your own page. But I have the feeling this feature might appear in the future. (David Louis Edelman, 2007)

What about SecondLife? I must admit, I never was too fond of these websites but I try to be at little biased as possible. Just like MySpace, SecondLife boomed like no other website. Everywhere, people were talking about their latest discoveries. You could hear stories of people making millions of US dollars on the website in just a couple of days. But all good things come to an end. I wanted to see the current situation in person so I logged on once again – and probably for the last time -. Nothing but empty streets and the few people running around were trying to sell me some products I have never heard of before. Goodbye SecondLife.

“Few technology companies have succeeded in the long run with the mantra
-Why change?-.” (MacManus)

So, what can we learn from both cases? I you are unable to adapt quickly, your business will run dry. Next we try to sum up some elements that make your website a success.

People often tend to copy successful stories. Yes, this might be a success in the short term but probably – I say probably because there are plenty of other stories – it won’t work in the long term. So what you really ought to aim for is finding what you and other people desperately need. And please don’t make things too complicated. People are bored with complicated features. Keep things as simple as possible. Another element that made different successes, like YouTube and Flickr, work is that they begun small but had a clear vision of how they wanted to grow. I mentioned the fact of copying before but it’s necessary to be different.
And finally, just like in sports, it is very important not the let competition stop you, but, on the contrary, let it motivate you. (Richard MacManus, 2007)

References:
Richard Titus, Adam Hutchinson (October 28, 2008) More than just watching TV [online] available from <http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/10/watching_tv_is_more_than_just.html> [February 22, 2009]
David Louis Edelman (January 24, 2007) The end of MySpace [online] available from <http://davidlouisedelman.com/technology/end-of-myspace> [February 22, 2008]
Richard MacManus (September 5, 2007) 10 future web trends [online] available from <http://readwriteweb/com/archives/10-future-web-trends.php> [February 22, 2009]