Top Five E-Marketing Issues of Today

E-Marketing is a process of buying and selling that involves a marketing principles and techniques through electronic media like Web, Database, E-mail and Wireless to valuably acquire and retain customers.

E-Marketing, Online marketing and Internet marketing, all are same and are used interchangeably.

 

E-Marketing comprises of both indirect marketing elements and direct response and uses an array of technologies that help customers and their businesses to connect with.

Top Five Issues of E-Marketing Today: 

1. Categorizing  & Resourcing for E-Marketing:

As the magnitude of online conduits is going to increase day by day, the formation of marketing organization and accountabilities may need to modify in order to avail opportunities via new media at optimum level. For

this we need to develop e-marketing specific skills within the marketing team. 

2.Emphasis on Customer Relationship Management & Personalization:

The Internet proposes many prospects for an improved understanding of customer’s relation and for developing and maintaining a closer relationship with them. Customer relationship management and personalization systems permit the collection and application of comprehensive information to create such an environment which is according to the needs and wants of customers. Although the potential for such systems is considerable, they are difficult and tricky to implement and if not professionally managed, they can lead to the abuse of consumer privacy. Companies may need to improve their customer knowledge about customer value & satisfaction, their profiles and behaviors and then delivering targeted communications and online services that go with their individual needs. In short require e-marketing automation to develop personalized marketing memos delivered by web and e-mail in retort to customer events and behaviors.

Here another issue is phishing, which is the process of sending deceptive information that emerge to come from a trusted, valid source and request personal information for the purpose of committing identity theft. Phishing messages may often come from financial firms, like from any bank and may direct viewers to an authentic looking website to trap them into giving personal information including passwords & account numbers. This is a big and major issue and companies and consumers need to be cautious and aware of all these threats to confidential information.

To maintain customer relationship management and personalization following aspects should be keep in mind to assist in preventing e-crime so consumers may not suffer from it. 

•  Develop and keep up appropriate system failure methods
•  Review and inspect security violation reports 
•  Change password on regular basis
•  Appraisals of quality work and develop a sound system of controlling and access  to data 
•  Do not share identification numbers and passwords
•  Ensure physical security of equipment and storage devices
•  Install firewall
•  Do not automatically tell any sort of information to persons who have solicited contact with you, without checking their credentials 

 3. Need to define proper Online Value Proposition (OVP):

A distinctive and detailed differential proposition must be developed after complete research for online channels (web, wireless, e-mail) to achieve increased customer usage and this proposition must be clearly communicated.

Here we need to practically emphasis on 4p’s of marketing mix strategy i.e.

Product, Price, Place and Promotion so we can research customer’s needs and developing appropriate products, offer differential prices, place products specifications on their websites and promote them through different channels to inform customers of the benefits of a product and assist in different stages of the buying process.

4. Easy to use purchase process:

Large number of consumers does not prefer making attempts to purchase online because of inadequately designed purchasing process. So the process must be user friendly and reliable. It would be very helpful to tell customers in a chronological order, how many steps they have to be followed in purchasing process. And that all steps information should be clearly displayed at the top of web page.  A paradigm of the purchase steps are: 

Shopping cart->Account->Shipping->Payment->Verification->Confirm Notification.

5. Lack of E-channel Optimization:

There is no proper platform where e-channel process can be enhancing to improve e-marketing and there is a need to adopt such procedures for continuous improvement and monitoring the effectiveness of web and e-mail marketing.

To improve e-marketing effectiveness we must define the data that needs to be collected to improve the performance of online marketing.Companies should ensure that the data collected covers all aspects of e-marketing   performance.  Here few aspects are important like Business contribution that the online contribution either direct or indirect is costly or having profit in it. Then pay heed on Marketing outcomes that at what proportion   of sales, service contacts occur online and how effective is e-marketing at converting, acquiring and retaining customers.  

Then comes the different promotional tools such as search engines, direct marketing,  email, and advertising at driving quality over the website.Measures include efficiency, cost of acquisition, attraction and integration of tools.

For optimum e-channel few analysis tools are required to implement like Reporting of marketing performance tools, are develop for assessing serve load and do not always readily answer the questions marketers have. Then Analysis tools that focuses on how well different e-communications campaigns can be tagged and measured

Testing Programmes should be adopt to improve e-marketing by first see the sales level, profit, reduced sales cycle, Return on Investment( ROI), sales conversion rates, order size, order delivered, customer acquisition cost and then generate report.

Key Words:

Online Marketing, Internet Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), E-Channel, Services, Sale