Six uses that define your corporate email systems...
It seems that the idea of a "universal in-box" has been lost. It used to be that when we talked about email systems, it was a fairly straightforward conversation. Now with the advent of social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and others, it's very likely that you have multiple email systems that you are trying to manage and keep up with.
For the purposes of this note, I'm going to ignore the many social networks for the moment and focus on corporate email systems. I'm doing this for the benefit of simplicity, although we'll want to come back to social networking at another time.
One of the areas that we think about in terms of messaging is how many email systems should a company maintain and should there be distinct roles or purposes for each? We would argue that there are valid reasons for a company to maintain multiple systems and that trying to reduce the email systems to one is not very pragmatic. In addition, we would argue that these multiple email systems should be implemented to take advantage of their unique strengths and designed in a coordinated fashion to enhance the customer experience instead of allowing them to exist haphazardly without any acknowledgment of the others existence.
Consider the following functions and think of them in terms of their core purpose or best use.
Desktop email (Example: Microsoft Outlook & Lotus Notes | Purpose: personal communication)
Email marketing (Example: ExactTarget & Responsys | Purpose: mass marketing)
CRM email (Example: salesforce.com & Siebel-Oracle | Purpose: sales contact management)
Transaction management/ecommerce systems (Example: ATG & IBM WebSphere| Purpose: order confirmation)
Financial management (Example: Oracle & MS Great Plains | Purpose: invoicing & collections notices)
When looking at these systems you can almost assign department labels to each: HR, Marketing, Sales, Operations and Finance. It's funny how each function needs messaging capabilities, but the unique needs of that area of the company has created email requirements that make them difficult to replace with one of the other solutions.
Think about Outlook. Easy to use. Great for back and forth communication... and yet, who wants to use Outlook for marketing? Not many companies that I know. Or think about that simple order confirmation that is sent to your customer when their package ships? Is there really a valid reason to move that into Outlook and send it from the desktop? Probably not - at least we would say it's usually ill advised.
Some CRM systems are great for managing contacts, improve customer management, include marketing automation and campaign management - yet grossly neglect the simple ability for a customer email response to come back into the CRM system and allow the sales person to reply. This simple email function, taken for granted in Outlook, Notes and other desktop systems simply does not exist in widely used CRM systems.
In addition to the five prevalent purposes noted above we would add human resources and employee communication as another area with strong messaging needs. Information that flows to your employees for benefits, personnel issues and compensation in many cases need the characteristics of email marketing (how many employees opened and read the last announcement?). Unfortunately, few HR departments that we know use email marketing capabilities to communicate with their employee population.
Email messaging systems are a critical part of today's corporate culture. They provide valuable tools and useful information. They allow us to communicate frequently and in a timely manner. We strongly encourage you to take inventory of all messaging systems and deliberately decide how and when messaging capabilities will be used. This should include not only the six core purposes already identified but should also address instant messaging, text messaging and social networking platforms.
Once a messaging inventory has been concluded you will have built the basis for knowing where and how automated marketing processes can be successfully implemented.
www.iangilyeat.com
For the purposes of this note, I'm going to ignore the many social networks for the moment and focus on corporate email systems. I'm doing this for the benefit of simplicity, although we'll want to come back to social networking at another time.
One of the areas that we think about in terms of messaging is how many email systems should a company maintain and should there be distinct roles or purposes for each? We would argue that there are valid reasons for a company to maintain multiple systems and that trying to reduce the email systems to one is not very pragmatic. In addition, we would argue that these multiple email systems should be implemented to take advantage of their unique strengths and designed in a coordinated fashion to enhance the customer experience instead of allowing them to exist haphazardly without any acknowledgment of the others existence.
Consider the following functions and think of them in terms of their core purpose or best use.
Desktop email (Example: Microsoft Outlook & Lotus Notes | Purpose: personal communication)
Email marketing (Example: ExactTarget & Responsys | Purpose: mass marketing)
CRM email (Example: salesforce.com & Siebel-Oracle | Purpose: sales contact management)
Transaction management/ecommerce systems (Example: ATG & IBM WebSphere| Purpose: order confirmation)
Financial management (Example: Oracle & MS Great Plains | Purpose: invoicing & collections notices)
When looking at these systems you can almost assign department labels to each: HR, Marketing, Sales, Operations and Finance. It's funny how each function needs messaging capabilities, but the unique needs of that area of the company has created email requirements that make them difficult to replace with one of the other solutions.
Think about Outlook. Easy to use. Great for back and forth communication... and yet, who wants to use Outlook for marketing? Not many companies that I know. Or think about that simple order confirmation that is sent to your customer when their package ships? Is there really a valid reason to move that into Outlook and send it from the desktop? Probably not - at least we would say it's usually ill advised.
Some CRM systems are great for managing contacts, improve customer management, include marketing automation and campaign management - yet grossly neglect the simple ability for a customer email response to come back into the CRM system and allow the sales person to reply. This simple email function, taken for granted in Outlook, Notes and other desktop systems simply does not exist in widely used CRM systems.
In addition to the five prevalent purposes noted above we would add human resources and employee communication as another area with strong messaging needs. Information that flows to your employees for benefits, personnel issues and compensation in many cases need the characteristics of email marketing (how many employees opened and read the last announcement?). Unfortunately, few HR departments that we know use email marketing capabilities to communicate with their employee population.
Email messaging systems are a critical part of today's corporate culture. They provide valuable tools and useful information. They allow us to communicate frequently and in a timely manner. We strongly encourage you to take inventory of all messaging systems and deliberately decide how and when messaging capabilities will be used. This should include not only the six core purposes already identified but should also address instant messaging, text messaging and social networking platforms.
Once a messaging inventory has been concluded you will have built the basis for knowing where and how automated marketing processes can be successfully implemented.
www.iangilyeat.com
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