"Progressive profiling is hailed as a marketing technique that boosts lead generation, improves marketing intelligence, generates more conversions, and helps you gain more information about subscribers over time."

Progressive profiling is hailed as a marketing technique that boosts lead generation, improves marketing intelligence, generates more conversions, and helps you gain more information about subscribers over time.

Wow. It’s like listening to a commercial for Ginsu knives: “And that’s not all!”

Progressive profiling isn’t all bad, but it isn’t as good as a Ginsu knife commercial would have you believe either. Here are some guidelines for when to use it, and when to look for other tactics.

Progressive Profiling Works When…

If first impressions are lasting impressions, then the welcome email is key to subscriber engagement. A welcome email - or series of emails - sets the brand tone and sets expectations of things to come.

"With more revenue still offline than online those brands that have a physical presence can score over the pure digital brands by thinking digitally offline too."

After over a decade in successful use there is abundant proof that email is not only the connective tissue of all data-driven marketing but also the revenue-producing juggernaut of digital efforts. Yet despite claiming the highest ROI of all direct marketing channels at 28.5%¹, the highest driver of online conversions²and the number two spot (second only to search) in new customer acquisition³ email marketing is still too often swept out of sight, called upon only when we need miracles worked. In my nearly 15 years of experience with the channel, I am too frequently surprised and dismayed that email is not receiving nearly the attention and investment it economically deserves.

"Advertisements are like wrinkles: every day they appear in places you don’t want to see them, and once they are there they never go away (on their own). So to contemplate the death of any advertising medium is a fool’s errand. I have been called worse."

"Are companies now relying more on their social media specialists to handle customer service complaints than their customer service departments? Does it take a customer “going public” with their complaints to get proper service?"

"Anyone in marketing knows that the one constant within any marketing team, whether internal teams, clients, vendors, etc., is ego."

"How do you develop 80+ users to become your company’s trusted advisors on using your automation tool, developing corporate strategy, and managing ongoing media evolution? "

"Sales teams at most ESP’s are comprised of a sales leader and a sales engineer who are assigned to your project. That sales team has been onsite and meeting with a large number of prospects and has been exposed to a wide variety of problems on the client side. How unique do you consider the data integration issue from your CRM to your email tool to be? How differentiated is the problem you may have getting IT to develop an API, or to have the marketing team cut down on the time it takes to proof and approve the creative for a campaign? For most of us that sell, the answer is not very unique at all."

"One of the benefits of email marketing is the tracking and reporting available to see how people are interacting with the messages sent. This includes basic email metrics as well as click-stream reporting on post-email activity on the Website, where the conversion usually occurs. So it always concerns me when I work with consulting clients that don’t leverage this data to their advantage. Sometimes it’s an institutional failure to properly track and report. But too often it’s an individual’s lack of comfort or even interest in the data that is holding them back."

"I’ve had the pleasure/misfortune of working with a number of vendors over my career. A great vendor partner is a pleasure to behold – they can help drive your business to greater results than you could on your own. Which is nice."

"Google’s recent redesign of Gmail has created unprecedented hand-wringing and blog writing. And for good reason. People’s cheese got moved. Hard earned spots in Priority inboxes got lost. But it was the flies in the soup that made everyone give this new place a bad review."

"An email marketer needs to be fearless. In the world of digital marketing, email is an extreme sport. It takes guts to stare down the send button and hit it. Not everyone is nervy enough to do that day in and day out."

"While you need to personalize content based on your segmentation goals, the cultural greeting can be even more important than the body of the email. First impressions matter."

"Not long ago, I was involved in a RFP where it was evident that the project’s champion, who was advocating changing providers, did not have universal support from her team. The conflict that existed internally in their company played out in front of my team as we sat in the 3 hour presentation and watched various players from the prospect disagree on major issues that would impact the entire project. Not only was their clear and open hostility from the opposing points of view, but the variety of needs that were being expressed would completely cause the RFP and its focus to be revamped. Essentially, the field of prospective vendors may not have been aligned to the buyers’ final needs."

"My job is to offer email and digital strategic solutions to clients that run the gamut of knowledge and experience between having zero clue what to do with email in their marketing program, those who need to initiate email into their marketing plan, through clients that simply need help optimizing their current email program. "

My father owned a kitchen and bath showroom on 7th Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. He ran the business from when he was a young man to when he retired a few years ago. While he was cordial with people just browsing his store, he would drop everything when a paying customer walked in. If he hadn’t heard from a customer in a while, he would reach out with a phone call. Putting the customer first and always staying in touch are principles that have stuck with me throughout my professional career.

"I've been to a lot of conferences. But frankly, a lot fewer than I used to. Why? It's simple: conferences, especially email conferences, have become an increasing waste of time that fail to deliver (drumroll, please) sustainable ROI."

"While our subscribers sign up for emails to save money on products/services, keep up with industry trends or simply to be entertained, those of us in the industry usually have ulterior motives when opting in to an email list. I subscribe to hundreds of emails - and to email subscription services like Milled, Mailboxr, Patroneer and The Swizzle - so I can keep swipe files on everything from copy to design to offers and more."

Many marketers do not even bother with an unsubscribe survey, and many who do are either learning the wrong thing or ignoring a majority of the data. They may listen to a portion of it, but have unsubscribed from many of the insights that a survey can offer. The unsubscribe survey can be a more powerful tool for both insights and strategy if optimized.