Netcore & IAMAI showcase India's 2nd Email Marketing Conference in Mumbai

After the huge success of the first conference in Delhi, Netcore solutions in association with IAMAI, organized India's Second Email Marketing conference in Mumbai. The conference provided an insight to more than 300 delegates from the industry about the current happenings, upcoming trends and importance of email marketing.

The third conference will be held in Bangalore post the IPL. Pioneers who graced this occasion were Rajesh Jain, MD Netcore; Abhijit Saxena, CEO Netcore; Gulshan Verma, Country Head, Komli Media; Sankarson Banerjee, CIO India Infoline; Sandip Tarkas, President (Customer strategy), Future Group; Atul Phadnis, CEO WhatsON, Ratish Nair, Co-founder, Ad magnet.

In an open discussion Rajesh Jain, MD, Netcore and Ratish Nair, Co-founder Ad Magnet highlighted that, Email Marketing in India is still a decision that is majorly dependent on the technology experts in an organization rather than the marketing people involved.

Heading the panel discussion, Abhijit Saxena, CEO, NetCore Solutions said, "Leveraging Netcore's strengths in messaging infrastructure and digital real-time communication we are ensuring that email marketing becomes a key medium in a marketing strategy of every enterprise, ensuring deep customer relationship and enabling new customer acquisition"

Commenting on the growth of the email Saxena said that this year there was a 150% growth rate. The two major contributors of this growth is broadband connectivity and on the other side the reducing prices in devices. He adds that everyone has an email id including the youth. The youth may not use email to stay connected because social networking sites already serve that purpose. However, the email is being used to stay connected in a more enterprise to person way rather than person to person.

Speaking to Adgully Saxena states that the key challenge faced by email is spam. When individuals enter this market in an irresponsible manner it destroys the market and threatens it with regulations and restrictions. He adds that the main sectors that benefit from the email are BFSI, retail and most importantly Ecommerce. The later, especially since it is growing rapidly and heavily dependant on email marketing.

When asked whether social media is a threat to email Saxena explained that there was no comparison between the two because they offer a different set of solutions. To illustrate, social media marketing is more powerfully in creating a brand response while email marketing provides offers, deals and promotions. They co-exist.

With respects to the growth plans for Netcore for the coming years Saxena states three important factors. First, are there enough email subscribers? Second, how can u monetise on this subscriber base? And third, can you depend on someone else to help grow your base? Also to explore the uses of email.

Saxena advices clients that they need to believe in their product so that confidence can translate into an effective impact on the person targeted. He also cautions them to give email more attention because you could not be able to expect what the turn out may be.

Moving back to the panel, Gulshan Verma, Country Head ' Komli Media while contributing to the panel discussion said, "Email marketing is an excellent weapon in a marketer repertoire. However one has to plan it carefully keeping in mind the target audience. What works in India might not work in some other part of the world. Also email marketing in India needs to go to the next level by linking it to entertainment. How much time are people spending with you is an important metrics to track".

"91% emails received by a corporate are SPAM. Spam filters are getting better nowadays and this has its effect on email marketing where the creative planner needs to plan the communication with a lot of limitations. Email marketing is getting quite interesting. Currently reading email on the go is just restricted to text. How can I engage with such a TG is really important" said Sankarson Banerjee, CIO India Infoline while supporting the argument that the 3G technology, cheaper smartphones and flat rate data plans by the providers and more number of emails being read on mobiles are some of the major contributors to the way email marketing will be viewed in future.

Atul Phadnis, CEO Whats ON India while contributing to the discussion said," The power of email marketing is immense. In the past also, we have seen examples of how email marketing has changed the overall market share for a company. It was instrumental in helping AdEx to grow from 5% market share to 75% in a very short time".

Sandip Tarkas, President (Customer strategy), Future Group said "Email marketing has emerged to be a powerful tool for customer service, engagement and retention. And in the coming years it is going to bring a revolution in the way organizations interact with their patrons." | By Vanessa Azavedo [vanessa(at)adgully.com]