Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket

14 FUNDAMENTALS DM News • E-Mail Marketing Guide 2007
Five compelling reasons to
centralize your e-mail
BY TRICIA ROBINSON PRIDEMORE
An effective e-mail marketing strategy should take a holistic
approach that includes all e-mails sent to the customer,
whether marketing, customer service or transactional. However,
this can be a daunting undertaking for companies that aren’t structured
that way.
Only with a centralized approach can an organization have the
visibility and control needed to deploy and enforce an e-mail
strategy across all departments and channels. Sending a marketing
e-mail to a customer without
taking into account a recent purchase
or an outstanding customer
service request can
undermine the relationship
you’ve worked so hard to create.
Use these five reasons to start
the discussion in your firm:
Improve customer relationships.
A centralized e-mail platform can
provide you with centralization
tools to limit the amount and fre-
Tricia Robinson Pridemore
quency of e-mail each customer
StrongMail
receives, which can stave off customer
burnout, complaints and unsubscribes. Being able to temporarily
suspend marketing messages while a customer is
resolving a problem with customer service can go long way.
Increase sales. Centralization gives you valuable insight into customer
behavior across all departments, which can be leveraged to
send relevant and timely marketing offers. It also makes it easier
for marketers to fully leverage transactional data to insert marketing
messages into product confirmation e-mails or to customize
marketing e-mails based on past purchases.
Reduce customer service costs. Each call into customer service
reduces the profitability of the customer relationship.
Centralization helps reduce those calls by enabling you to identify
problems in real-time. For example, if shipping is delayed for a
product, let the customer know before he expects to receive it.
Maintain a consistent brand. Building a brand requires tight controls
over how the company is portrayed in all external communications.
Without a centralized approach, there is no way to ensure
that customer service is using, say, your new logo and tagline.
Centralization allows marketing to maintain and carefully manage
one approved repository of message templates and content blocks.
Maximize e-mail deliverability. The best way to get your legitimate
e-mail past the filters put in place by the ISPs is to engage in
best practices and maintain a positive sender reputation. If you’re
unaware of the e-mail sent by other departments or unable to control
it, you are putting your reputation at jeopardy.
Centralizing your e-mail on one platform empowers the savvy
marketer to leverage all customer data across all departments to
deliver appropriate and relevant communications.
Tricia Robinson Pridemore is vice president of market and product strategy at
StrongMail. You can reach her at trobinson@strongmail.com.
ESSENTIAL GUIDE
Getting to “Yes! Yes!”: Double
opt-in as a power practice
BY OUTI TUOMAALA
As e-mail marketing matures, and quality triumphs over quantity,
it is time to refocus on the permission and double opt-in
processes. Most legitimate e-mail marketers place permission
among the top best practices. Double opt-in, or double-confirmed
opt-in, is the gold standard. When these processes are implemented,
everyone wins.
Double opt-in does require some work and effort, but the challenges
are easily overcome when it is included from the very
beginning. Some primary benefits include:
■ Fewer bogus subscribers, bad addresses, bounces, complaints
and spam reports, resulting in a clean e-mail list with verifiable
permission from every subscriber.
■ More efficient e-mail list management and better deliverability.
■ Better compliance with the best practices, in addition to exceeding
the permission requirements of anti-spam legislation.
■ Increased subscriber response and engagement.
To implement a successful double opt-in practice, follow these
simple rules:
Plan and test your double opt-in process thoroughly. The same
great e-mail industry advice that applies to e-mail marketing campaigns
applies to your opt-in confirmation and welcome messages
as well. It’s best to focus on deliverability, readability and attractiveness
to entice subscribers, use an automated signup process to
send the confirmation message
immediately and customize any
default messages, including the
subject line, so your recipient can
recognize your brand before
opening the message. These are
easy to test and adjust. With a bit
of creativity, it can be fun and
help you avoid the mechanical
tone of automated messages.
Create synergy between your
signup page and the subscribers’
Outi Tuomaala
e-mail. To make this transition
L-Soft
smooth, use the signup confirmation
page to inform your subscribers that a confirmation message
will arrive in their inbox shortly. Remind them of the added security
benefits.
Make a good first impression. The welcome message completes
the successful subscription. Remember, this message gives you the
perfect opportunity to thank them for subscribing. In addition,
you could provide a specific message showing the benefits of your
e-mail list.
Develop a lasting relationship. The double opt-in process makes
your subscribers feel safe and secure when interacting with your
brand. It’s a double “Yes!” for any long-term business relationship.
Outi Tuomaala is an executive vice president at L-Soft. She can be reached at
outi@lsoft.com.