By Marc Munier, Commercial Director at Pure360

I don’t know about you but I tend to get the feeling that a lot of marketing and branding messages are a little “Me, Me, Me”? A lot of consumers and B2B purchasers are getting turned off by this approach and in order to maintain effective communication with our target market we need to develop what we do from traditional marketing to dialogue marketing.

‘Dialogue marketing’ is the future, we can no longer rely on “tradigital” to achieve our goals – which is using old style thinking in new media channels so blasting out emails like they are going out of fashion. What we need now is to build conversations with our prospects and customers; these form the basis of lasting relationships which will deliver more value for both parties.

What do we know about our consumers? In order to achieve this level of dialogue it’s vital that marketers build up as much information as they can in order to create an accurate picture of their target audience if their marketing emails are to be acted upon.

With the growth of social media and online communities, audiences have become more sophisticated and email marketing has had to evolve in order to compete with growing inbox activity. Gone are the days of generic, dull emails that bear no relevance to their recipients needs and in their place are communications that add value, offer something of interest and ultimately open up a dialogue.

It’s essential these emails stand out from the crowd, grab the recipient’s attention and are relevant if they’re going to be read and acted on. The ‘call to action’ should be clear and an attractive proposition offered in order for the consumer to be engaged.

Email recipients should be encouraged to sign up for additional communications by offering them promotions that they wouldn’t normally have access to. This provides the marketer with additional information to help them build a profile of their consumer.

Engaging consumers in a dialogue is invaluable as it allows a better understanding of their interests, their needs and how they’d like to be communicated with. It also allows marketers an insight of how their business is being perceived, where they might be falling short and where they’re getting it right.

Using this feedback from consumers, changes can be made to the business model wherever necessary, meaning the customer offering can be made as attractive as possible maximizing it’s potential.

Even with the growing popularity of social media, email is still the most prevalent digital communication channel due to its ability to create a ‘call to action’ in existing, and prospective customers. In order to achieve the best results marketers must listen as well as speak, collecting information from consumers as they go and using this information for the benefit of future campaigns.
www.pure360.com

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