Email Advertisment

Four Keys For Success

1. Data as the Enabler: For legitimate email marketers, breadth, depth, and quality of data can be your largest drivers of success.  That means being able to answer the following questions: What data do you need?  How would you market differently if you had the data?  How will you capture it?  How will you "operationalize" it?
   
2. From Customer Insight to Contact Strategy: Email Marketers must master the Who, What, When and Where questions of email marketing:
   
   • Who: Make sure you're able to segment your audience, classifying them so you can better understand and address their needs.
   • What: Make sure your messages vary to match each segment of your audience.
   • When: Time and sequence your message delivery for optimum performance.
   • Where: Make sure you're communicating to your customers through the right channel (i.e. store, web, mail, email, etc.).
     
3. Migrating from "Blasting" to "Triggering":  Switch to "triggered" messaging from "blasting" messages.  In order to achieve a true dialogue with your customers, it is imperative for email marketers to trigger their email campaigns to their customers based on specific events: behavioral, time-based, etc.  A few examples of instances where triggered emails have proven their effectiveness are:
   
   • "Only 5,000 miles to Elite Status!"
   • Alert of changes in stock portfolio
   • Over your credit limit
   • New product available in previously purchased category
     
4. Email Governance - Avoiding Slippery Slopes: Email marketers must be aware of the new needs that have arisen as email marketing has began to assume a larger component of the marketing enterprise. These needs include:
   
   
   • Consistency in communication
   • Contact frequency "rules"
   • Legal/privacy policy controls
   • Managing customer choice—opt in/out policies
   • Discerning data "owners" from data "users"
   
   As a best practice, email marketers should take the following steps to avoid going down these slippery slopes that too often derail email marketing efforts:
   
   
   • Analyze: Understand internal list cross-over and full customer contact picture.
     • How many times are your customers being contacted each month?
     • How does this vary?
   • Implement: Clear authority for cross-function decisions. Establish rules for email data use and priority assignments.
   • Communicate: Establish master email communication plans across all groups who touch customers.

Although email marketing has come a long way in just a few short years, there is still a long way to go until its full potential is achieved. It's imperative for email marketers to be proactive in assuring the long term success of campaign efforts. As a best practice, make sure you always take the necessary steps in order to stay relevant to your consumers through responsive, triggered email marketing.

If you decide to use bulk email, the following guidelines will keep you out of trouble:

• No Fraudulent schemes.
• No sub-sites under one hosting account.  e.g. www.yourname.com is fine, but not www.yourname.com/anysite/
• Confirm that your hosting company will allow bulk emailing off the server.
• All email marketing needs to contain a working removal link or option.
• No spoofing/forging of sending (From) Email Addresses.
• No spoofing of any kind, including URLs.
• Everything should be legal.  Nothing illegal.
• No Political, Racist, Hate, Child Porn or Illegal Adult Sites, Warez, Cracking, Phreaking, etc.
• Respect copyright and ownership rights of content (i.e. not host stolen content)
• No port scanning or network attacks of any kind or use of our networks as a staging ground.
• Comply with all US Laws including the recently passed Unsolicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003.