Think Multicultural

As I prepare to give a presentation on Hispanic email marketing at the DM Days Conference in New York tomorrow (June 12, 2008), I found it helpful to put together a set of “Universal Truths” or best practices for email marketing. My thinking was that there are key tenets that should be followed by all marketers when using email, regardless of industry or target audience demographics.

My 8 Universal Truths of Email Marketing are:
1. Email Marketing is about creating a clear value exchange with recipients
2. Email is an integral part of people’s lives
3. Email is a proven marketing vehicle
4. Email programs need to be measured
5. Content is king!
6. Take care of your email list
7. Partners are critical to success
8. Email integrates well with other channels

So how do these Universal Truths apply to Hispanic email marketing? And are any other best practices that are unique to the Hispanic email marketing world?

As to how these truths apply to the Hispanic market, while they are all relevant, four (4) stand out as being particularly important when marketing to Hispanics.

Email is an integral part of people’s lives - eMarketer data shows that of the 20.2 million Hispanic Internet users, 79% use email.

Email is a proven marketing vehicle - Recent Mintel Comperemedia data shows that Hispanics are more likely to open an e-mail marketing message than other consumers.

Content is king! - A recent report from JupiterResearch posits that the right personalization and segmentation will aid e-mail marketers looking to reach Hispanics.

Email integrates well with other channels - that same JupiterResearch report states that Hispanic e-mail users are more likely to make an offline or in-store purchase influenced by e-mail.

Lastly, there is one best practice that is unique to Hispanic email marketing - what I am calling the “9th Hispanic Email Marketing Universal Truth.” This truth is that fulfillment needs to be consistent. What this means is that often, Hispanic email programs are developed that are not consistent with the entire user experience online. For example, a CPM email drop with unique Hispanic creative, when clicked on, may take a user to an inconsistent landing page or Web site (which were not optimized for the Hispanic market). Often times there are language disconnects - the email creative is in Spanish, and the landing page is in English, etc.

More to come on this topic after my presentation.

I just left Miami Beach and the 2nd annual ad:tech Miami conference. Per Danny’s earlier post, there was a noticeable drop in attendance from last year (I didn’t attend, but I also heard the same comments from past attendees). However, I was found most of the panel discussions insightful and interesting - particularly the ones pertaining to Latin America.

There was one topic that was discussed in a few panels and kept coming up in my conversations at the various networking breaks and parties - what will the ad agency of the future look like?

This is a question that I think about all the time - I guess you could call it the “thing that keeps me up at night” (although my 16 month old daughter Maya holds that title most nights). I run a multicultural interactive agency - a niche within a niche. There were panelists at ad:tech from a handful of Hispanic-focused interactive agencies… another niche within a niche. One of the principals at one of these Hispanic interactive agencies made the case that interactive will be integrated within traditional ad agency capabilities in the future.

I had a similar conversation with the CEO of a large general market interactive agency who asked me “do we have to expand into traditional in the future?”

Someone even brought up the question of whether multicultural advertising will inevitably have to be integrated into general advertising as the U.S. population becomes more and more diverse (we already see this happening in places like Los Angeles where “minority majorities” are causing clients to hire multicultural ad agencies as their lead agencies).

This is a big question that I making some bets on. I am very curious what some of you out there think? Here are some interesting thought starters?

1. Will there room for specialists interactive agencies like Hispanic interactive agencies?
2. Will traditional agencies need to have specialty digital capabilties like SEO and mobile?
3. Will traditional agencies continue buying interactive shops or will the opposite start to happen?

Ad:Tech Miami is this week. I’m hearing from several sources that attendance is way down from last year. Where is everybody? Are people cutting back on expenses because of worries about the economy? Is Hispanic advertising so busy that nobody has time to go have drinks on Batanga’s dime? Or Terra’s?

If you went to Ad:Tech Miami last year but didn’t go this year, drop us a line and tell us why.