Chris Baggott, ExactTarget’s co-founder and chief marketing officer, believes his comments reported two issues ago in Magilla Marketing that e-mail service bureaus have too much employee overhead to survive were misconstrued. As a result, he has clarified his position on his blog:
“My comments were construed to say that I was an advocate of eliminating people and letting software do all the work. This is absolutely not my position at all.
“My contention … was that I don't need my e-mail service provider to be the sole source of those services, and those revenues are vulnerable to more nimble software solutions that can put powerful tools into marketers hands.
“The strength of software (ESP's, CRM, Web Analytics...not to mention Multi-variant testing and dynamic web sites) is to provide tons of data back to marketers that help in the decision making. With great insight available through this data, coupled with easy to use software tools that allow execution of that data, what happens is a much more level playing field for all marketers. It makes for better marketing generally and lowers costs significantly.
“The reality is that there are tons of great, creative and skilled marketers out there. ExactTarget alone has over 350 licensed agency partners that provide fantastic services for their clients.”
At least he didn’t take the usual copout and say I quoted him out of context.
The whole post can be viewed here: http://exacttarget.typepad.com/chrisbaggott
