Ask the Expert: Mark Brownlow, author of Email Marketing Reports (Part 2 of 3)

We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Brownlow, writer, editor and owner of Email Marketing Reports, to pick his brain and tap into his unique perspective on the industry. In part 1 of our interview, we asked Mark to recollect how email marketing has changed over the years, and to share his most memorable moments from the past decade. In today’s post, we get Mark’s thoughts on the industry’s biggest success and failures.

PV: Where and how has the email marketing industry (and email marketers) succeeded?

MB: It might sound unambitious, but survival is success in an Internet world where barely a day goes past without some technology or business model becoming redundant.

Part of this success is explained by the industry's willingness - at least in recent times - to embrace new technologies and channels that were often pitched as competitors or usurpers of email's position.

While the industry does get a little defensive at times, you'll find the more enlightened email marketers exploring social media and blogs and looking for ways to integrate email meaningfully into wider marketing initiatives.

PV: What have been the industry's biggest failures?

MB: It would be unfair to point fingers at "the industry" because vendors and marketers alike have their own legitimate agendas outside of a collective whole. That said, we have often allowed ourselves in the past to be too satisfied with the status quo.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is fine if you work in a vacuum. But competition for attention continues to increase, the delivery world has changed, the user has changed and what worked for many years certainly won't cut it in the future.

Given even bad email efforts used to make profits in the past, we've also been lazy even about implementing basic best practices.

The tragedy is that the "best practice" information and experience is out there, but those producing this info are largely preaching to the choir. The challenge for vendors particularly is to get out there and reach busy marketers and businesses that simply don't have email marketing education on their agenda.

In the past, the industry also missed the chance to draw a clear distinction between email marketing, direct mail and spam. CAN-SPAM didn't help there either. Anything we can do to draw that distinction between an email peddling penis enlargement and a news alert from CNN or upsell offer from Amazon can only help.

Finally, we have failed to develop the right relationships with ISPs and others responsible for delivering email to their users. I think some marketers lacked the humility and understanding to accept that these organizations are really doing us a favor by delivering our email.

Yes, their customers want our email. But realistically, fewer people are hassling corporate IT or their webmail provider about missing this week's sales promotion than about too much spam. The ISPs have other priorities. From a purely pragmatic perspective, if you wanted the postal service to deliver your letters for free, wouldn't you want to be on good terms with them?

The adversarial relationship is not just down to email marketers, but I think we have the bigger responsibility to find common ground with ISPs. And there is much common ground: after all, we're both interested in keeping spam out of inboxes and ensuring wanted email gets through. I'm hopeful this will get better as senders and receivers come together at places like MAAWG and elsewhere.

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Make sure to check back on Monday for the conclusion of our interview with Mark Brownlow, including his predictions for the new decade.

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