OH, MY GAWD!!! One of the "Authorities" Actually SAID IT!

If you've been here before, you know I get "the latest" on the mobile marketing industry, filter it for how it applies to small local businesses, and publish it for the benefit of what I know to be the driving force in the local economy (and if you haven't been here before, take a scroll through the archives. I also post some observations on a Google blog (coincidentally, of the same name, which might or not contain "cross-posts".)

Reminding those of us old enough to remember "Sleepless in Seattle", and how AOL's "You've Got Mail" helped market the movie, the article referenced how email "supplanted 'snail mail”", and expressed the author's opinion that email, "As a marketing channel, [has] been an unmitigated disaster...".   Then, he points out that "the initial comparison of the two types of mail was flawed."

I agree, to an extent, with both.  Yes, email has delivered "microscopic response and conversion rates", and "a backlash in the form of spam rules and filters."  Yet email is still the ranking champion of digital marketing channels.  And really, "direct mail" isn't all that much better when it comes to a cost-benefit analysis.  That's why email marketing is still used.  From a cost-benefit  comparison, calling  email "...an unmitigated disaster..." is flawed.

The article then examines "cart abandonment".  The author points out, quite correctly, that the only reason "cart" was ever used in online marketing was to "ease
users’ comfort level... and establish... the notion that shopping via the internet was... the same as shopping in a store — only better!" But he admits that "shopping online is not the same as shopping in a store — nor is it unequivocally better."

It's the point that he arrives at, the title of his article, that justifies my post.  IT'S IMPORTANT THAT SMALL LOCAL BUSINESSE GET THIS!

He calls it "a recombinant approach" ( I particularly enjoy the "genetic" tie-in, having recently read about DNA data storage).  What he suggests is that businesses match their marketing "with the way consumers decide what to buy."   Print ads, TV, radio, outdoor, and emails all still work for some people. But as he said, "there’s no
one-size-fits-all strategy".

We can help any small business blend any and every traditional marketing plan with the current reality that most people shop online, but they still prefer to buy local.