1roleThese days it‘s more and more important to get a holistic view of things, not only within the field of marketing or within the enterprise, but also beyond. Things influence one another, so it is becoming crucially important for decision makers and marketers to perceive influences and correlations beyond their personal area of expertise. You will always find this quality in successful people.

A holistic marketing strategy pulls together not just marketing mechanisms like web design, web development, content management, e-commerce portals, SEO, web analytics, performance marketing, metrics, social media marketing, the performance of tools, online PR, online media, press relations with email marketing and newsletter campaigns, but will also consider economic, local, cultural, political, environmental factors, to name a few.

According to Hubspot‘s ebook on Creating Lovable Marketing Campaigns, buying an email list, e.g. is a short-term solution for getting a lot of subscribers who will receive your marketing communication. Yes, you may get rewarded for expanding your email database and moving these numbers up, but in the long-term your list will dwindle significantly and this unethical practice will hurt your reputation as an email sender and as a brand.

The long-term solution to this same goal of “growing your email database” will be to build an opt-in policy and appeal to people with your valuable marketing content and expertise. Believe me, the results of such practice will be much more powerful and lasting.

Deciding to use Email or SMS marketing just isn‘t enough, it is important to make sure your overall campaign is:

  • Educational & Helpful
  • Timely & Customized
  • Consistent in Language and Message

According to Hubspot, the following are the key components of successful marketing campaigns:

Hubspot1

Basically, you need a synergy of inbound and content marketing and email/SMS to grow your subscriber base in an ethical and natural way.
Victoria‘s Secret is a great example of using email and SMS effectively as part of a greater marketing strategy. You can download the app, and e-mail subscription is offered in a way making customers want to subscribe in order to avoid missing out on all the special offers, sales and freebies.

victorias_secret

Victoria‘s Secret manages to keep drawing customers into their stores and onto their website, because they constantly have really attractive offers and even give away free goods. They effectively and consistently promote this across all channels available, and so always manage to get people to spend more money than they actually intended to.

Email and SMS seems to play a crucial part here providing a direct way to reach customers with new offers, new products and more. However the company also provides regularly new content, making each message unique and interesting. What‘s more important, they‘ve somehow managed to earn their customers‘ eagerness to receive these messages.

So, it‘s important to get your email and SMS marketing right, but what’s even more important is to make sure it fits into your overall marketing and company strategy. If done best and integrated with content, inbound and web messages will be at the heart of your holistic marketing strategy.

So, how is your marketing strategy doing?

By Anjum Siddiqi