A new era for marketing

Tink Taylor, Business Development Director of dotMailer, responds to the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s redefinition of marketing.

A new era for marketing

 The redefinition of the term ‘marketing’ is a very welcome development for which the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) should be congratulated.  Definitions can be problematic, not least when attempting to summarise the activities of such a varied discipline, but the Institute’s offering succeeds in being comprehensive and thorough. It is particularly pleasing to note that the definition stresses the central position of the customer in marketing activity, something that is now made easier by technological developments in reporting and evaluating campaigns.

Developments in marketing since the CIM’s last definition in 1976 have been fast-paced. Perhaps the biggest change and the one that is most applicable when viewing marketing from a customer-centric position is evaluation. The metrics by which we assess the effectiveness of digital campaigns or projects provide a vast array of new possibilities that the marketer should welcome with open arms.

Email marketing perhaps demonstrates this in the most obvious way. Practitioners in 1976 would have relished the opportunity to have been able to record the recipients of direct mail, to collect data on their actions, and analyse their responses. Those of us that work in the digital marketing sector should hope that this redefinition creates a better understanding of our industry, and an appreciation of future possibilities amongst our colleagues, clients and consumers. We now have the technology and the tools at our disposal – putting them into practice has never been easier.