By Ryan Deutsch, VP of Emerging Media, StrongMail

strongmailGoogle has become the first major brand to fail in its attempt to integrate email with emerging media channels, following the collapse of its Google Wave application.

Although aimed at the consumer market, Google Wave’s collapse raises questions on how businesses looking to integrate email and emerging channels will be affected.  Social media has experienced a stratospheric rise, but is this collapse an indication that integrating email and social media for marketing strategy is doomed?  Absolutely not.

The Google Wave failed because the application was too complicated –resulting in lower than expected adoption.  The Wave was a collaboration tool built for individual communication.  Not a marketing application designed to enrich customer relationships and brand perception. That said, the failure of the Wave should remind marketers integrating social media and email to invest in strategic guidance in order to take full advantage of combining the two mediums.

Email is a common thread that connects every touch-point in the customer’s lifecycle, but to build effective customer relationships brands must first understand how it affects channels like social networks and mobile. A recent report from Forrester Research finds that “given the increasing complexity of the email marketing channels – including the need to integrate email with social and mobile channel – the call for strategic guidance will only continue to grow in importance.”

The ‘strategic guidance’ on offer includes listening and monitoring services; lifecycle communications frameworks; email and social media campaign tools and execution services; community management services; analytics and loyalty marketing programmes that encourage and reward participation across the social web. When leveraging emerging channels such as social media, this guidance can be the key to establishing the customer bond and connecting with them at a meaningful level.

For example, research suggests that ‘best’ customers represent around 20 percent of a businesses customer base, and account for 80 percent of sales. Identifying and striving to create a unique experience for those customers should therefore be the aim of nearly every marketer on the planet. This is where companies need to start thinking more strategically to identify their best customers and create unique, special experiences for them.

As part of this strategy companies must… Read the rest of this entry »