One of the drivers behind IMN’s e-communications solutions is the belief that companies can quickly “over-communicate” with their customers and prospects, with the unfortunate result of lost messages, information, and sadly, the audience.  We work with our customers, large and small, to help them consolidate their e-communications into regularly scheduled, well-structured, informative marketing that presents consistent content, offers, and positioning. 

What does this mean to you?  If you are a large or midsize company, we’ll share with you best practices that help you avoid the blunder of sending out too many confusing, redundant, and conflicting messages. 

If you are a smaller company, we’ll discuss a different business challenge:  your limited time and resources and how to focus on the most impactful e-communications strategies and eliminate time-wasters.

David Fish, CEO of IMN, comments on this approach for the larger sized companies.  “Most larger companies have multiple layers of communications: they have to speak to and through their channels to potential and existing buyers.  Some of these larger organizations are simply ramming their channels and their end customers with data from multiple groups.  Others are sending constant e-mails that include different offers and calls to action with no coherent messaging, thereby jeopardizing investments in relationships they have built over time.  With no feedback loop except opt-outs, these businesses have no idea what is working, what is failing, what is just plain useless effort, and what messages are being drowned out despite their good intentions.”

In a just-released white paper on this topic, entitled “Lost in the Mail:  Over-communication is Burying Your Message,” we provide large organizations with an alternative solution to “chaotic noise” – an approach that integrates multiple communications into a coherent, enterprise-wide means of expression.  Informative Marketing™ depends on the use of informational and “soft-sell” content to keep companies top-of-mind with channel partners, prospects, and customers, and continual honing of that content based on readership responses.  The IMN paper identifies e-newsletters as the most natural format for this kind of strategy.  Through case studies, the paper shows how three organizations are using e-newsletters for Informative Marketing, including:

• A global manufacturer whose partners were receiving 3-5 e-mails a day from the company, with over 1,000 employees initiating often contradictory messages.
• An automotive group that wanted to help its dealerships stay “top of mind” with local customers and prospects while ensuring coherent messaging across locations.
• A major technology player that serves over 40,000 companies in 30 countries, whose resellers were being buried with content for their customers, and were finding it hard to sort, prioritize and use the information.

With these cases as a backdrop, the white paper describes how to leverage content and calls to action to keep readers engaged from issue to issue; how to develop and execute a coherent communications strategy to and through the sales channel; how to form an integrated, enterprise-wide content management strategy; and how to use analytics on readership responses for continuous improvement.

Small Businesses Need Help, Too

Smaller companies are faced with a different challenge and are looking for best practices that will help them benefit from e-communications despite limited manpower and multiple demands on their time.  We have found that these companies can offer regular, recurring e-newsletters using the Informative Marketing approach—rather than several e-marketing tactics—to increase efficiency and effectiveness. For instance, we help our clients understand how to:

·        Layer content and measurement—i.e., how to lead from strong editorial that retains and engages readers, to soft-sells around specific products, and then to strong calls to action which deliver “hot leads.”

·        Use e-metrics to identify individuals moving to the point of sale, and to hone content from e-newsletter issue to issue based on readership analytics.

Over-communication will provide many provocative discussions in the upcoming issues of Pro&Content, so stay tuned.  In the meantime, if you would like a copy of the “Lost in the Mail” white paper, check the Quick Poll here in this issue.