E-mail marketing player Bigfoot Interactive is taking steps to beef up revenues by realigning its sales staff along vertical industry lines.
The New York-based firm said it has created seven client services groups, each designed to focus on a different sector, including automotive; financial services; publishing; healthcare and consumer goods; retail; entertainment/travel; telecom/technology; or non-profit/public/education.
Under the reorganization plan, each group will develop customized technology and toolkits tailored for use by clients in each industry. Additionally, Bigfoot said it would reorganize its marketing, sales, research and list services units along vertical lines.
The reorganization aims to take advantage of the growing maturation of some industries’ Internet advertising efforts. While some sectors continue to only dabble in online marketing, others are allocating increasingly large amounts of their spending to the interactive channel. (A recent study by Forrester and Evaliane, for example, found that financial services firms were the leading driver of online advertising’s growth in the U.K. during 2001.)
Additionally, studies by IDC have suggested that up to 40 percent of entertainment, technology and consumer goods manufacturers plan to outsource their e-mail marketing during the next 12 months.
As a result, these clients are demanding increasingly advanced and customized solutions, said Bigfoot Interactive Chief Executive Al DiGuido
“Industry competency is in high demand by the market and by our client base,” DiGuido said. “Bigfoot Interactive’s technology utilities and new organizational structure clearly differentiates our approach to e-mail communications from the competition and once again demonstrates our commitment to provide industry leadership and solutions that meet the specific needs of individual marketers and maximize ROI.”
The move continues a trend by e-mail marketing players to strike deals expanding their expertise in new industries. Last year, rich media e-mail firm Dynamics Direct signed an agreement with EnterTec Group, a marketing consultancy focusing on entertainment companies.
Larger media players are also following suit. Yahoo! , for instance, has taken great pains to turn its Yahoo! Travel and Yahoo! Movies into marketing engines in their own rights. Last month, the two vertical units of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based portal signed a deal with Artisan Entertainment, Fox Entertainment, and British Airways.