You Don't Integrate Email Marketing, So Why Integrate Other Channels?

Don't believe me?

Run this analysis for me tomorrow.

1. Sum all sales attributed to all channels for the past year.
2. Sum gross margin dollars attributed to all channels for the past year, subtracting all promos and discounts.
3. Divide gross margin dollars by sales ... for each channel.
4. Look at the results for the email marketing channel.

Since I first analyzed this back at Eddie Bauer more than twenty years ago, the results are consistent.

• In email marketing, you are likely to find the worst gross margin percentage, or close to the worst gross margin percentage.

In other words, our industry spent more than twenty years making sure that the best deals are always available via email marketing.

Why do we allow this?

In an industry with unfettered zeal toward making sure that everything is integrated and aligned and synergized ... we allow the best promotions and the lowest prices in email marketing.

You already treat email marketing fundamentally different than all other channels.

Might it be time to treat all channels differently in an effort to drive true File Power and profitability?


P.S.: This is where I get feedback ... folks reach out and say they disagree with me, they'll say that email is fully integrated with the rest of the business. And I'll ask them if they have run my analysis yet and they'll say "NOOOOO". This is the problem we're dealing with. We don't actually analyze issues. We just believe stuff. I'm asking you to analyze stuff.