Bricks and mortar were great for building pyramids and shopping malls, but as this new century blossoms, we’re increasingly recognizing that traditional buildings are no longer as essential as they once were.   

Traditional retail outlets are struggling—and even closing—for example, as consumers increasingly discover the value of online shopping which saves them time, gas, and quite often, sales tax.  At the same time, no single store can possibly offer the full range of product choice available by simply entering a product name in a search engine and clicking the mouse.

But as e-tailers have proliferated to meet this demand, they are finding themselves increasingly challenged by competitive forces and the need to hone their marketing efforts. That old, “if we build it, they will come,” approach no longer works, as competitors start to take advantage of new marketing tools that are evolving to facilitate optimization of the e-tailing channel.

One of these tools is analytics. In the early days of e-tailing--say 10-years ago and up to the present--blasting e-mail solicitations to groups of prospects was a key modality for marketing offers, and for attracting traffic to Web sites. Analogous to the old direct mail campaigns of pre-Internet days, the sub-text to this marketing technique was really, “if you throw enough ____ against the wall, something’s bound to stick.” But the problem now is that lots of e-tailers are taking this approach, so getting the right message in front of the right people is becoming more and more critical to make these campaigns successful.

The challenge in meeting these goals, and in crafting a compelling marketing message for email campaigns, is that until recently there was no way to evaluate the ROI of campaigns. Determining what will work is often based on what has worked in the past, but without full visibility into results of past campaigns this is just not possible. Enter analytics.

Analytics software enables marketers to compare and contrast results from different campaign messaging across different email presentation, different target markets, and different products. Seeming to be “just what the doctor ordered,” analytics software solutions are being gobbled up by e-tailers as they seek any edge possible. But, sadly, all too often these early adopters are finding themselves disappointed by the fact that these solutions represent “islands of automation,” and require significant integration with legacy solutions to work. Then, if any of the legacy solutions get updated, modified, or replaced, the analytics integration effort needs to begin all over again.

Fortunately, there is a way out of the weeds in the form of solutions that integrate analytics with software for other campaign tools—like emailing. Vendors offering these integrated solutions are really doing what e-tailers themselves do to stay alive and prosper: they are making their solutions customer-centric. The wonder is that e-tailing companies don’t yet insist on this approach as they seek analytics capabilities.

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