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E-Marketing

E-Marketing defines how to create demand for products with an end-user in an interactive environment.

E-Marketing and E-Business are sometimes used interchangeably. E-Marketing is however a subset of an overall E-Business strategy. Depending on the size of your organization, you may only need an E-Marketing role. Other organizations will have an entire E-Business department with functions dedicated to the pillars of E-Business as I've outlined on these pages. Regardless of alignment and organizational size, here are the facets of eMarketing:

CRM

There are generally 3 facets of CRM: Service, Marketing, and Sales. Depending on the type of organization you work in, CRM efforts may entail all these facets for your E-Business team. Generally speaking, for consumer-oriented E-Business, the "Marketing" facet of CRM is where E-Business professionals will focus.

The concept behind CRM in E-Business is centering all customer-facing communications around segments of customers in your database. While the online world has evolved significantly from a technical perspective, most websites today treat all site visitors exactly the same. Marketing messaging to new purchasers of your products compared to long-time brand advocates should vary. I attribute this to the seasoned "car guy" who walks onto the dealer lot having owned 10 or more cars in their lifetime. How the salesperson "markets" or "sells" to the seasoned "car guy" would be much different than a first-time new-car buyer with little-to-no familiarity with vehicles. The seasoned buyer would be aggravated with a basic sales pitch that insults their intelligence.

The same goes for the marketing of your products within the realm of E-Business -- by leveraging the history of your customer database, you know more about your customer to be able to tailor a message that is relevant to them. CRM strategy then becomes the foundation for which your E-Commerce and E-Marketing strategies are built upon.

Email marketing

Email marketing is a centrally managed function by eMarketers to coordinate outbound and transactional messaging to customer and consumers. Because of the frequent touchpoints and relatively low barrier to entry, email marketing should be viewed as a strategic asset and not a way to "blast" your database. Product and Brand Managers who insist on creating "E-Blasts" should be carefully managed/policed as their intentions are focused specifically on promoting their product line while not necessarily taking into consideration the frequency in which the database is used.

SEM, SEO, Online Advertising

SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and Online Advertising all are methodologies in which you are reaching out to new customers via different methods. Email marketing can sometimes be lumped into this "outbound marketing" bucket, however email marketing is most effective when leveraging existing customers. SEM, SEO, and Online Advertising extend beyond your website before a consumer has generally taken action on your site.

That being said, the art of balancing the marketing spend against these three facets is critical. Performance varies by industry, product, and website, so there is no one cookie-cutter approach to successful SEM, SEO, and Online Advertising strategy. The eMarketing role facilitates all three of these facets in an effort to find the highest return on investment of spend.

Social Media management & monitoring

eMarketing also involves social media management and monitoring -- often times the online channel is the first line of defense. Since customer service departments are not fully up-to-speed on social media best practices, the management and monitoring of these channels of support often are facilitated by the smaller eMarketing team. Social Media, another area in its infancy, typically represents a small percentage of total customer support (when measured against inbound phone calls and email support), so a small, agile team is generally all that's needed to function on the "front lines."