Marketing and IT departments seem an unlikely combination especially as one has a reputation for building things to last, whilst the other wants the next big thing. But, how can marketing and IT work together to create a more connected up offering?

There is no denying that technology plays a vital role in almost all business functions and it is changing how firms manage their accounts, monitor their supply chains and even keep tabs on employees. Few business functions have been affected by technological advances more than marketing and it is becoming increasingly necessary for CIOs to liaise with marketers to make use of new technologies in the right way.

The marketing and IT departments separately acquire knowledge on how best to use technology to fulfil their own functions and to meet their business goals. It is important that they share this information and work in partnership to achieve their aims when it comes to technology as this is in the interest of the business overall. Not doing so can cause a surprising amount of disruption.

One element of that knowledge is evident in the use of shared servers. Any business’ website is stored on a server and it is not uncommon for the web design companies, which marketing departments employ to host their websites, to allocate space on one server to lots of different companies but in a similar sector. Everyone from accountants to creative agencies could find that they are sharing server space with some of their competitors.

Why do they do this? There are a number of reasons, but it is namely down to cost. Shared server hosting is the cheapest and easiest way to host a web site. For the client, it is also easy to upgrade or get more disk space at the click of a button.

Shared server space isn’t necessarily a problem, and it is certainly normal for this to happen. It only becomes an issue if one of those businesses that share your server becomes blacklisted because the knock-on effect is that transactions for all companies using that server are affected – in other words, emails will be blocked and websites can go down and be out of action. For business continuity, this is far from ideal. What’s more, if those businesses had no idea that they were sharing a server in the first place, how do they know what steps to put in place to prevent this happening?

Marketing departments often use email as a key method of communicating with their databases of customers and prospects. Legitimate marketers will use opt-in methods and carefully select information to send out to their contacts, but if you share a server with an illicit ‘spammer’ then you are at high risk of being taken down as well.

You might not think there is much chance of this, but it is not uncommon for around 100 companies to be all on the same server – and some of these are likely to be in the same or similar sector to yours.

This is one reason why marketing needs to have a good understanding of IT infrastructure. What’s more, the IT department can advise of ways to avoid this happening. Making this connection will prevent disruption.

For example, you can pay to be on a server which is not shared. This may be a bit pricey for smaller companies, but it guarantees you exclusivity. Having your own infrastructure is ideal for businesses that need high levels of security or connectivity, as a dedicated server doesn’t share components such as RAM or disk space, has its own IP address and as such isn’t impacted by other websites.

Sharing goals is key for the IT/marketing relationship to succeed but it might take new ways of working in order to understand each other’s processes. Both departments are responsible for communication in their different ways and yet they are connected in delivering success for the business.

 

By Rachael White, Marketing specialist at Beaming.

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