You know when you’re at a holiday party sipping eggnog and chatting with a stranger about your career and their eyes start to glaze over? Don’t be that holiday Grinch as a marketer.
So regularly we get swept up, with good reason, into industry jargon and terms no one can relate to because it’s exactly what we’re dealing with. Thing is, we’re getting in our own way – if we told someone we dealt with lifecycle marketing or drip campaigns, they might think we were working with Dr. Kevorkian!
When email marketing teams interact with say social media teams, developers, and/or management, there is rarely a grasp of what the email team is handling. It gets back to that holiday party conversation, and putting the holiday cookies on the bottom shelf for all to reach!
How do we avoid this? Explain stages. Let people know what happens when, and why. It typically sounds something like this:
Me: “Where do you shop?”
Party: “True Religion Jeans”
Me: “OK, so you’re buying new jeans and have browsed their site but want to be notified of upcoming sales–that’s where we come in! That subscription box on the truereligion.com page will feed your email address (and any other details you give) to us to then send you what’s called a ‘welcome email’ and then enter you into a program that will intelligently feed you ongoing messages, along with ongoing promotions.”
Party: “That’s incredible! I’ll never see email the same again!”
OK, so it never ends that way. Still, it makes it easier to discuss things at a later date if you’ve had a conversation like this to lay the groundwork with the “Party” (be it your friend, your co-worker, your spouse, etc.). It’s a Festivus miracle! :-)
About the Author: Sharon
