Can You Do Email Marketing?

NEW PROFESSIONS ARE BEING BORN THAT COMBINE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION, CREATIVITY, AND AN EDUCATION IN BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS. COMPANIES ARE AVIDLY SEEKING YOUNG PEOPLE THAT HAVE THESE SKILLS TO ACHIEVE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION. BUT FIRST, THEY HAVE TO SHOW THEY CAN PREVENT MARKETING MESSAGES FROM ENDING UP IN THE SPAM FOLDER

by Ferdinando Pennarola, Dept. of Management and Technology, Bocconi
Translated by Alex Foti



It’s not that easy to get emails delivered. One could easily counter that sending an email is the simplest thing in the world, but this is actually not true: delivering thousands of emails to one’s customers for a marketing campaign based on a modern and interactive tool such as email requires a set of skills that are not easily available even in university classes. Email was one of the popular Internet services which accelerated the development of the web twenty years ago, so much that many have defined it as the real killer app. It has taken a prominent role in marketing, giving life to professional Direct Email Marketing services, or DEM, an acronym which is widely in use in professional circles.

Delivering thousands of emails to consenting customers is not easy, especially when the latter give you a secondary address (for example, @gmail.com) to hijack advertising traffic and leave their main mailbox unclogged. Also, if the vast majority of outgoing emails are pointing to the same server, the latter will react with a DoS (Denial of Service) because it would interpret the sending as a malicious attack, causing DEM to fail, since the messages would not be delivered to the recipients. Email marketers must therefore have a balancing platform for sending messages (load balancing) which at regular intervals attempts to deliver the email messages to the destination server. Once delivered, the emails will hopefully be opened, read, eventually forwarded to another recipient, and then finally trigger a series of events related to marketing, such as, for example, the customer visiting the store, because s/he was informed via email of the existence of promotional campaign, and deciding to purchase. The vast majority of these communications end up in the trash, without ever being opened: but what are the ingredients that make your DEM a success? Is the choice of email subject? The HTML layout of the message text? The time and/or place of sending?

Behind all this there are new professions which are consolidating in the vast world of digital, thanks to the intersection of basic IT skills enriched by experience and a good dose of innovation and creativity. It is not surprising to read, from research on LinkedIn, that the skills that ensure the best salaries in the job market are related to cloud computing, user interface design, data analysis, software integration, and innovative web architectures that are capable of integrating user experience across a variety of digital channels and devices. These skills make the difference in market competition in world that is increasingly digital and, consequently, the people who master them contribute decisively to the strategic success of their business organizations.


Unfortunately, there isn’t yet, and perhaps there will never be, a library from which one can draw material to update or acquire the skills that are needed for digital. The new gold rush of the late 2010s is digital transformation: all companies, at all levels, are announcing ambitious projects for the digital rethinking of their processes, sometimes bringing about actual revolutions in their business models. The corporate hunt for the best professional profiles is on and young people that are passionate about information technology are avidly sought. Having a good business education is always a plus, so as to be knowledgeable in the fundamentals of management, marketing and organization, and be able to work productively and efficiently in professional environments. Finally, these people should have gained practical experience in the field, by successfully dealing with a real-world problem: how to send 250,000 emails a day and not have them bounce back or cause negative feedbacks.