Interview with Craig Herman of ExactTarget

May 8th, 2007 by Lars

I had coffee with Craig Herman, Director of Global Development at ExactTarget, yesterday.

We discussed their offering as well as where he thinks email marketing is headed. I was curious to hear how they view integration with web analytics since they have partnerships with the major web analytics vendors: WebTrends, WebSideStory, Omniture and Coremetrics. Craig told me that ExactTarget wants to stay true to email marketing and permission marketing. They were, however, the first email marketing vendor to publish their own API, and they do integrations with many different systems such as web analytics, CRM and CMS. In fact, 2,000 out of their 6,000 clients have integrated with one or more system. The most developed integration with a web analytics vendor at the moment would be the ones with Omniture and WebTrends according to Craig. He also said that integration with Coremetrics will be just as developed soon. Of all of ExactTarget’s customers, approximately 60% are in B2B.

I was also curious whether we should expect to see considerable consolidation in the email marketing industry in the near future. Craig said he thought it would have happened already three years ago. While he thinks that there will probably be one to two major acquisitions this year, ExactTarget has no such plans. Not even to enter a new market. Instead, ExactTarget is growing by investing in its technology and issuing four major releases a year.

I couldn’t resist to ask what ExactTarget’s unique value proposition is since the market is flooding with email marketing vendors. Craig said their advantage is threefold:
- Technology (they can integrate with almost everything)
- People (they have a breadth of knowledge and some 400 resellers)
- Deliverability

He told me an example where a client rolled out email marketing programs throughout all their 80 offices worldwide.

The next thing I asked was how large a share of ExactTarget customers are located in Europe. Craig said they’re around 300, which would make it 5%. In the Nordic Region, customers include Icelandair, Volvo and Cubizz. The bulk of the European clients are located in the U.K. I also wanted to know whether he had noticed if certain European nations are more mature in their approach to, and adoption of, email marketing programs. He said he hasn’t noticed any major differences between European countries, but that that the worldwide market has grown considerably during the last couple of years and that customers are trying to be more relevant. Still approximately less than 20% have more than 7–9 personalizations.

Craig thinks that the number one challenge in 2007 is to make businesses realize that email can’t be an isolated channel but rather an integrated tool for personalization of communication. Companies must stop viewing email marketing as DR on the Internet. It is a retention tool, though Europe tends to view it a little more as an acquisition tool. Businesses should integrate everything they can.