Engagement. With the possible exception of relevance, it is arguably the most overused word in email marketing. Engagement became a hot topic in 2012 when deliverability professionals began touting it as a necessity for continuing to reach subscribers’ inboxes. Their argument went that the criminal spam issue had largely been solved with filtering technology. As a result, they said, email inbox providers were going to turn their attention to the next problem: commercial senders with large, largely inactive files.“

What do peas, Italian wealth in the early 1900s and email house files have in common? The 80/20 rule.
Unfortunately, the 80/20 rule leads a lot of email marketers to punish 80 percent of their file out fear of disrupting the behavior of the 20 percent. Marketers learn early in their careers—often in business school—about the 80/20 rule and how it applies to business: 80 percent of a company’s revenue is typically driven by 20 percent of its customers.

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation goes into force in May and will be a permission game changer for many organizations that serve Europeans. It requires, among other things, explicit, provable permission from individuals to use their personally identifiable information to send direct-marketing campaigns to them. The GDPR also requires clear unambiguous explanations as to what the information will be used for, and the collection of no more data than is necessary to execute the campaigns for which permission has been granted.

The “Father of Direct Marketing,” Lester Wunderman, once said the best DMers all have one trait in common: curiosity. And while any marketing program can benefit from its practitioners having a strong sense of curiosity, email can benefit from it most. Email’s cheapness allows for sloppy practices that would have Wunderman crawling out of his skin.

Pop quiz: Is email and branding or a direct-response marketing channel? Answer: Yes. And that answer should inform every organization’s email strategy. Viewing email as a direct-response AND branding mechanism is a big shift from the way email has been traditionally viewed.