US-based StrongMail, as the name says originally an ESP (Email Service Provider) and quick to adopt a more integrated and connected email marketing solution approach that made it go beyond email, announced it changes its’ name into StrongView.
The company says it does so to better align its’ brand with its’ multi-/cross-channel offering and most probably also to emphasize it does more than email. A ‘better – read more integrated’ customer view (hence Strong-View) is another reason for the name change, according to the press release. Obviously, email remains key in the company’s offering as it does in virtually all multichannel solutions and marketing automation platforms.
Of course, the fact StrongMail drops the ‘mail’ part in the brand’s name, has nothing to do with a disbelief in email but everything with the clear need for a better customer view on the customer across channels. For marketers an integrated view offers nothing but benefits if the right ‘data’ are used, combined and acted upon. Are there benefits for the customers too? You bet. The fact they like to be served in a consistent way and treated by your company as a person instead of a subscriber without having to suffer the consequences of disconnected strategies is probably the most important one. And we know it since many many years.
Email marketing remains essential, in the evolving offering of companies like StrongView too. We all know email marketing works darn well and is used a lot. Email is and remains the channel that connects the multichannel dots. Yet, at the same time I see some of my email marketing friends now also use research showing that email marketing totally trumps all other channels in retail now and then to fuel the social media is dead messages we start seeing popping up everywhere now too. Channels matter a lot but in the end the customer and context decides, can we agree on that please? No ‘channel wars’? Customer experiences + touchpoints + consistency + relevance + the right channels for the right contact moments and right ‘personas’ = marketing success.
So, we shouldn’t get into those debates without properly looking at the context of the research, the context of the different channels and the fact that all channels and tactics will be declared dead sooner or later if companies don’t use them in a strategically smart way as you can read between the lines in this blog on content marketing strategy in plain English that can be easily applied to any form, channel or tactic whatsoever.
Channels matter, acting upon a connected customer strong-view matters more
The only marketing that can die is bad marketing. So, congratulations to StrongView, may you sell many features on top of email marketing and a friendly appeal to every marketer in any marketing discipline to stop 1) talking about things they’re not specialized in before having done/learned/tested/proven it or 2) offer insights about all the stuff that works, regardless of tactics and without dancing on the graves of yet another declared-dead-umbrella-term message. May we all thrive in integration and may the customer be happy, served and opening his wallet because what we do as marketers works, even if it requires proving all the death declarations wrong.
Let your evolutions be driven by your customers as StrongMail’s CEO (so, now StrongView) said here a long time ago and as today the company seems to express with the new brand name – on top of other reasons.
