What is electronic marketing?

E-Marketing is still quite a controversial topic to talk about, as no one managed to unify the various theories around it; However, there is one thing about which there is no doubt: that e-Marketing first appeared in the form of various techniques implemented by pioneering companies selling their products over the Internet in the early 1990s.

The frenzy around these new marketing techniques created by e-tailers and supported by the Internet quickly gave birth to a new dimension of what we knew as Marketing: e-Marketing (Electronic Marketing).

There are many definitions of what e-Marketing is, the simplest and briefest is the Mark Sceats formula: e-Marketing is Marketing that uses the Internet as a means of expression. A working definition is the one that comes from a group of CISCO specialists: e-Marketing is the sum of all the activities carried out by a company through the Internet with the purpose of finding, attracting, winning and retaining customers.

e-marketing strategy

The e-Marketing strategy is normally based and built on the principles that govern traditional offline marketing: the well-known 4 P’s (Product – Price – Promotion – Positioning) that form the classic marketing mix. Add the extra 3 P’s (People – Processes – Tests) and you get the whole expanded marketing mix.

So far, there are not many aspects that differentiate e-Marketing from traditional offline Marketing: the extended Marketing mix (4 + 3 P’s) is built around the concept of “transactional” and its elements perform transactional functions defined by the paradigm exchange. . What gives e-Marketing its uniqueness is a series of specific functions, relational functions, which can be synthesized in the 2P + 2C + 3S formula: Personalization, Privacy, Customer Service, Community, Site, Security, Sales Promotion.

These 7 functions of e-Marketing are at the base of any e-Marketing strategy and have a moderating character, unlike the classic Marketing mix that only includes situational functions. The moderating functions of e-Marketing have the quality of moderating, they operate on all the situational functions of the mix (the 4 classic P) and among themselves.

1. Personalization

The fundamental concept of personalization as part of the e-Marketing mix lies in the need to recognize and identify a particular customer in order to establish relationships (establishing relationships is a fundamental objective of Marketing). It is crucial to be able to identify our customers on an individual level and collect as much information as possible about them, in order to understand our market and to be able to develop customized and personalized products and services.

For example, a cookie strategically placed on a website visitor’s computer can give us vital information about the available access speed: accordingly, if we know the visitor is using a slow connection (for example, dial-up), we’ll offer a Low volume. variation of our website, with reduced graphic content and without multimedia or flash applications. This will facilitate our customer’s experience on our website and prevent them from leaving the website due to pages taking too long to load.

Personalization can be applied to any component of the Marketing mix; therefore, it is a moderating function.

2.Privacy

Privacy is an element of the mix closely related to the previous one: personalization. When we collect and store information about our customers and prospects (hence when we do the personalization part of the e-Marketing mix) a crucial issue arises: how this information will be used and by whom. An important task to perform when implementing an e-Marketing strategy is to create and develop a policy on the procedures for accessing the information collected.

This is a must and a necessity for any conscientious marketer to consider all aspects of privacy, whenever data about individual persons is collected and stored.

Privacy is even more important when setting up your e-Marketing mix, as there are many regulations and legal issues to consider regarding the collection and use of such information.

3. Customer Service

Customer service is one of the necessary and required activities among the necessary support functions in transactional situations.

We will connect the appearance of customer service processes to the inclusion of the “time” parameter in transactions. By changing from a situational to a relational perspective, and e-Marketing is primarily based on a relational perspective, the marketer was somehow forced to consider support and assistance on a non-temporary level, permanently, throughout over time.

For these reasons, we must consider the Customer Service function (in its broadest and most complete definition) as an essential function within the e-Marketing mix.

As we can easily deduce, the service (or assistance if you wish) can be performed on any element of the classic 4 P, hence its moderating nature.

4.Community

We can all agree that e-Marketing is conditioned by the existence of this impressive network that is the Internet. The mere existence of such a network implies that both individuals and groups will eventually interact. A set of entities that interact for a common purpose is what we call a “community” and we will soon see why it is of absolute importance to participate, to be part of a community.

Metcalf’s law (named after Robert Metcalf) states that the value of a network is given by the number of its components, more precisely, the value of a network is equal to the square of the number of components. We can apply this simple law to communities, since they are a network: then we will conclude that the value of a community increases with the number of its members. This is the power of communities; that’s why we have to be part of it.

The customers/clients of a company can be seen as part of a community where they interact (either independent or influenced by the marketer), therefore, developing a community is a task that must be carried out by any company, although it is not always seen as essential.

Interactions between members of such a community can address any of the other e-Marketing features, so it can sit alongside other moderation features.

5. Website

We have seen and agreed that e-Marketing interactions take place in a digital medium: the Internet. But such interactions and relationships also need a suitable location, one that is available anytime, anywhere: a digital location for digital interactions.

Such a location is what we call a “site”, which is the most common name for it. Now it is time to mention that “website” is simply a form of “site” and should not be confused or viewed as synonyms. The “site” can also take other forms, such as a Palm Pilot or any other portable device, for example.

This special location, accessible through all kinds of digital technologies, moderates all other functions of e-Marketing; is then a moderating function.

6.Security

The “security” function emerged as an essential function of e-Marketing once transactions began to take place through Internet channels.

What we need to be aware of as marketers are the following two security issues:

– security during transactions carried out on our website, where we must take all possible precautions so that third parties cannot access any part of a transaction in progress;

– security of the data collected and stored, about our customers and visitors.

An honest vendor will need to consider these possible causes of further problems and cooperate with the company’s IT department in order to formulate compelling (and true, honest!) messages to customers from whom their personal data is protected. unauthorized eyes.

7. Sales promotion

At least but not last, we have to consider sales promotions when building an e-Marketing strategy. Sales promotions are also widely used in traditional Marketing, as we all know, and it is an excellent and efficient strategy to achieve immediate sales objectives in terms of volume.

This function relies on the marketer’s ability to think creatively: it takes a lot of work and inspiration to find new possibilities and new approaches to develop an efficient promotion plan.

On the other hand, the marketer needs to continually keep up with the latest Internet technologies and applications in order to exploit them to the fullest.

To conclude, we have seen that e-Marketing implies new dimensions to consider apart from those inherited from traditional Marketing. These dimensions revolve around the concept of relational functions and are essential in any e-Marketing strategy to be efficient and produce results.