branded for life

As published on Bazaar Magazine monthly article: Loaay’s Two Cents

Everyone is talking about Online Marketing and how cost effective it is. We tried Email Marketing by using the same newspaper ad to maintain consistency, but we had no strong results? Is Email Marketing a myth?

Far from it. Email is one of the most effective tools of Digital Marketing, but only when done right. However, the most common form of Email Marketing spreading in Kuwait is the one that shouldn’t be used, which is the exact same exercise your company tried; make a photo file of the print ad and give it to one of those so called database companies to invade hundreds of thousands of innocent users’ email accounts. No wonder it doesn’t work. Email Marketing is NOT photos of print ads; consistency doesn’t mean ‘sameness’ of visuals. It’s not mass emails to a list of individuals who didn’t give their contacts and permission to be contacted.

Email Marketing is an opportunity to engage and delight customers and consumers who gave you permission to email them with tools that can’t be applied offline. Take advantage of technology: Create video and/or audio material and link your email content to it; give advice; educate; entertain; research; reward and involve loyal enthusiasts to help bring your brand to life. Can every business do all these activities and should they? Of course not! Be selective but get busy online. Kuwait has over 33% market penetration (people online). Most of them come from the highest purchase power segments. Spending 70% of your budget on print is a thing of the past…and that’s just my two cents.

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