David Baker shares a true story about his client. It is a perfect example of how sophisticated technologies don’t have to be the winner for every occasion.

In fact, a good strategy doesn’t start with creative or any technology that supports creation of such creative such as through dynamic content and other data. It starts with understanding your customer.

There was a retailer who sold items through catalog and e-mail. E-mail was then an emerging channel, and their program was in its infancy: no segmentation, terrible creative, no list management or controls, and barely able to test subject lines. Their programs were relegated to offer strategies driven by the product teams.

They agreed to allow us to pilot a performance improvement program whereby we’d use our best practices and technologies to build the foundation for the next generation of their program. We did just about everything you could think of: sophisticated targeting, dynamic content, RFM analysis; we threw in seasonal trends and then every deliverability and e-mail tactic there was. The e-mail looked beautiful and it was as optimized as you could get, yet … we barely moved the needle.

Timing and frequency are the only factors that matter much in this case. Using targeting technology, for example, is not helpful because it doesn’t improve timing and frequency.

The morale of the story: Even if it is simple, email marketing still works as long as it caters to the heart of the problem you face when keeping in touch with your list.