A/E Firms Missing Out E-Marketing Benefits

Proper expertise and a solid contingency plan can thwart legal battles.

By Mark Goodale

Despite the many technological advancements of the past decade, architecture, engineering, and environmental consulting firm marketing staffers continue to rely heavily on hard-copy marketing materials, a new survey shows.

Data from ZweigWhite's 2004 Marketing Survey of A/E/P & Environmental Consulting Firms show firms send out an average of 85 percent of their marketing pieces through the mail, compared with only 13 percent by e-mail and 2 percent by fax.

In addition to being virtually free, e-mails are fast and can be targeted toward specific contacts. Plus, it's easier to update your marketing materials regularly or change specific text or images depending on who the piece is going to. Clients will usually be more impressed by pieces specifically targeted to them than they are when they receive a generic piece that probably went out to several hundred -- or even thousands -- of the sender's contacts.

E-marketing has its downsides, too, however.

One of the biggest complaints from recipients of e-marketing materials is that the pieces are spam and they are overly intrusive. To mitigate the problem, firms should make sure they use a combination of e-mail and hard-copy mailers and keep track of any complaints to avoid sending pieces to those contacts in the future.

Additional survey data show firms are sending e-mails to the majority of their contact databases an average of three times per year, while they send hard-copy pieces an average of five times per year. E-marketing is most likely to be used for press releases -- of the 80 percent of firms that send out press releases, 63 percent said they send these via e-mail.

Goodale is a principal with ZweigWhite, a Natick, Mass.-based firm specializing in nationwide consulting to the A/E/C industry