Ben & Jerry’s announcement that they would no longer use email in the UK set off a flurry of reactions, from CMOs asking their staff whether they still need email to an entire industry up in arms over the news.  As a participant on the Inbox Insider’s list (a list of influential email industry folks), Ogilvy’s Gretchen Scheiman wanted to share the thinking from other marketing folks.

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Gretchen Scheiman gives some advice on one of the toughest challenges in email marketing: Managing Cadence.  See her article on the MediaPost Email Insider blog.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the 32^nd Annual Caples Awards. For those of you unfamiliar with this contest, it’s the Grammys of Direct Marketing (I’m reserving the Tonys title for the Echo Awards and Oscars for Cannes Direct…sorry).

As the stories about the award-winning work were presented and the trophies handed out, a co-worker of mine leaned over and asked, “What’s direct about that execution?” It was a good point. Seems like the lines between direct and general are blurring. But one distinction still stands the test of time-when you work in direct marketing you carry a proverbial scarlet letter.

To see what I’m talking about just walk through many agencies, and too often you’ll notice a common theme. The advertising folks and the direct guys are clearly, and in my opinion deliberately, separated. Whether it’s different floors or different corners of the office, when you work in DM are you (unofficially) the ugly stepchild of the agency?

But why? We give brands the same coddling and pampering as the general guys. Why do we seem to suck at positioning our own industry? I mean, we’re direct marketers. We can segment, calculate and rationalize data till the cows come home. Perhaps it’s time we apply all that smart thinking to address our own selfish needs.

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Facing pressure for heightened accountability, many marketers are putting much more emphasis on measuring actual performance of their programs.

Having helped many clients build state-of-the-art direct marketing strategies, I have compiled five typical mistakes companies make in designing their marketing strategies. Hoping we can all learn from the mistakes of others to build better and more effective campaigns, I suggest these mistakes as five ways of increasing marketing effectiveness through better planning — rather than better measurement after launching a plan.

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Effective, cost-efficient segmentation is the holy grail of email marketing. This Holiday season, a major retailer resolved to maximize revenues from the email channel by segmenting their customer base and sending more targeted emails.

To do this, they challenged agency partner Ogilvy to help them overcome two of the biggest hurdles most companies face when they decide to segment and target: what to do with the data, and how to keep creative costs reasonable while increasing the number of versions exponentially.

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