Email Marketing Tips | An unflinching look at the world of email marketing

Years ago, being the very first business of a certain type to move into a region gave you an automatic advantage. It makes perfect sense: when you’re the only game in town, well, you get the picture. But today, if we’re talking about brick & mortar stores at least, being first is not necessarily a good thing.Take a recent Marketing Sherpa article on Geotargeting. Marketing Sherpa picked the brain of an executive at Pitney Bowes on what marketers must do to create a healthy, accurate list of customers within a specific area.Pitney’s Jon Winslow had great answers on why it’s important to dig deeper when you’re creating a geography-based customer list, but one of the most interesting things he shared was how first-mover businesses (brick & mortar, of course) actually do worse today than those in lower positions.Winslow says the phenomenon has to do with the little guys upping their game by learning from the big guy’s mistakes. But maybe it’s the nature of the Web itself — the instant access to both gripes and praises — that makes the competition oh so fierce.In fact, thanks to the Web, I think the whole first-mover situation is disappearing altogether. With the exception of YouTube, Google and Amazon (not necessarily first movers, but BIG movers), the vast majority of Web-based businesses have no first-mover advantage. It’s a level playing field until someone breaks out a bit, tweaks their offerings or services, and grabs a big chunk of market share. And I, for one, like the way things are turning out.For more info on growing your business with email marketing and web 2.0 video email  services.