It’s easy to get a bit disillusioned with award ceremonies. You head there with a nomination, hoping that this might be your year. Sometimes it is and you come back not just with the gong, but the respect of your peers too. But sometimes it’s not to be. And while it’s tempting to shrug your shoulders, pretend you’re not really bothered or that some terrible injustice has befallen you, actually it’s always better just to hold your hands up and say well done.

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Manchester agency Red C has won a two year email marketing contract from high-speed rail operator Eurostar.  The agency was chosen from among 15 agencies following a multi-stage pitch process. The remit is to assist Eurostar in the strategic development of their pan-European email marketing and to deliver a suite of email communications for the UK, France and Belgium.

Following the recent deregulation of the European passenger rail market, Eurostar is implementing a number of changes to it business in preparation for the arrival of direct on-rail competitors for the first time.  The appointment of Red C is part of this programme as the company wanted to work with a single agency to help develop a unified and coherent approach across all markets.

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Effective marketing strategies aim to provide consumers with product information in an efficient way by highlighting its existence and increasing its awareness. Companies are therefore increasingly adopting the use of email as a means to achieve this, with varying degrees of success. This method has become a fast and efficient way for high volume marketing distribution, but it does have its drawbacks.

Consumers receive many marketing emails on a daily basis, and consequently, businesses are in continuous competition to stand out in an overcrowded inbox. Success in conversion-to-purchase is therefore largely based on how consumers receive and respond to the emails they are sent. Cognitive and behavioural factors such as memory/recognition and social trends also play a part in determining how successfully these emails are received by consumers. Such aspects can be determined by measuring how individuals view these types of stimuli, as well as indicating the shifting levels of attention in specific key areas.

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Last night I was looking forward to settling down in front of the TV to watch a rather interesting debate on the subject of direct mail.  I was expecting a well balanced argument from respected Panorama reporter Tom Heap looking at the pros and cons of the industry.  What I got was anything but balanced.  I haven’t seen such a one-sided fight since, well it was Saturday night actually….  broken toe?  Come off it David Haye, you can do better than that.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised given the title “Why hate junk mail?” but Mr Heap’s argument was not only unbalanced but incredibly naive, not to mention inaccurate.  I also found it incredibly distasteful and dis-respectful to the direct mail industry to tackle the subject of ‘Scam mail’ in the same programme.

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This year is the 25^th anniversary of a very significant event for me, an event that has led directly to me being here today.

In 1986, as a young direct marketer working for home shopping giant GUS, I was lucky enough to attend the Montreux Symposium, on the Lake Geneva shoreline (as Deep Purple put it).  At the time, the week-long Symposium was the biggest event in Europe for the direct marketing industry, and attracted some major speakers.  But for me, the single most significant session, one that profoundly affected my approach to direct marketing, was a ground-breaking live demonstration and seminar by Professor Siegfried Vogele, founder of the Institute of Direct Marketing in Munich that is now owned by Deutsche Post.

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As marketers we don’t expect things to stand still. We’re always searching for new trends and ready to try new channels and methods to get our client’s brands out to the consumer market.

Facebook is one of those channels that doesn’t stay still for long. 2010 saw the launch of Facebook Places. Now not far into 2011 and we’ve already seen the launch of Facebook Deals, with the likes of Debenhams, Starbucks and Mazda all jumping straight on the bandwagon. But I think one thing every marketer should be keeping a close eye on over the coming months is the new Facebook Messages.

There has been much speculation since Mark Zuckerburg announced his plans in November 2010, both as to what this means for Facebook users and more importantly for us, how it is going to affect the way we market to them. Some think it won’t make much difference, yet others are heralding it as ‘the end of email’. Whatever your personal opinion or business agenda, it is now gradually being rolled out to all Facebook users, and a few of us at Red C have been testing it out.

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It’s fair to say I’m not the brightest star in the sky.  So when I found myself getting involved in a conversation about the intricacies of email deliverability recently, I adopted my usual strategy when involved in situations like this: I nodded a lot, agreed with everything and escaped for a toilet break as often as I could.

But despite the awkwardness of this conversation, I started thinking to myself: I can’t be the only person involved in email marketing who finds the issue of email deliverability as confusing as a woman’s fascination with cushions and soft furnishings. And that’s what motivated me to write this blog article.

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Red C Account Director, Steve White, he’s a funny one. Not content with banging on about how Spurs are now effectively European champions following their victory over Inter Milan the other week (pffft!), he’s now on the verge of making an even bigger fool of himself with his “online is better than offline” tirade.

The thing is, what Mr White fails to grasp is that Online Vs Offline isn’t a boxing match, or a playground scrap, or a my-dad-is-bigger-than-your-dad-type argument. No, no this is bigger than that. This is about war.

Preparing for battle

See, your online marketing is like your infantry, your ground troops. These are the communications you send in to do a job and report back instantly. And that’s what they do. You send your email, people respond, you get results. Job done. You’re in and out and back home in time for cigars and a debrief.

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As forward thinking marketers it is one of our many jobs to seek windows of opportunities, for our clients. We actively seek new ideas and ways, in which brands can be brought into the fore front of customers minds. For our account team, staying ahead of the game for our client, Swinton Insurance, certainly paid off last week.

Working alongside the personal lines marketing team we are always actively looking for what I like to call “windows of opportunities” to push client boundaries and expectations of our agency and ultimately to reach into consumers’ minds.

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We’ve cracked open the champagne again today at Red C towers after learning that we’ve been nominated for the 2010 DMA Awards for our triggered email marketing campaign for Swinton Insurance. Our campaign uses timely and relevant triggered emails to talk to and engage with our customers and prospects throughout the year and has delivered some impressive results for Swinton.

The triggered campaign was created to engage with an audience of 1.3 million throughout the 11 months of the year when their core insurance wasn’t due for renewal and deliver a new online lead source in an increasingly competitive and crowded marketplace. Ultimately we wanted to drive quotes through the Swinton site but to also ensure that brand engagement was maintained every month through a consistently high open rate, low unsubscribe rate and a low cost per quote.

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