eMarketing - Email
In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer is email marketing, including:
- Emails for the purpose of enhancing existing customer relationships and fostering customer loyalty
- Emails for the purpose of cross-selling additional products and services to existing customers
- Emails for the purpose of acquiring new customers
- Emails for the purposes of communicating with various constituents, such as employees, shareholders and media outlets
- Advertisements included in emails sent by other companies to their customers
Why Email Marketing?
When compared to traditional offline marketing techniques, email marketing has many advantages.
- It is less expensive.
- Return on investment is high.
- It is virtually instantaneous. As opposed to a direct mail advertisement, an email arrives in a few seconds or minutes.
- It lets you push the message to your audience, as opposed to a website that waits for customers to come in.
- It is easy to track. You can track users via bounce messages, opt-outs, read-receipts, click-throughs, etc. These can be used to measure campaign effectiveness and tie sales results directly to the marketing investment.
- Specific types of responses or click-throughs can automatically trigger follow-up messages to be sent.
Opt-in Email
Opt-in email or permission marketing is a method of advertising that the recipient has consented to receive.
Permission email marketing can be used to achieve a high degree of satisfaction between consumers and marketers. With opt-in email, information sent to the recipient is expected. Because the recipient has elected to receive the information (i.e., they have opted in), we assume that he or she wants to receive it. Therefore, opt-in emails should be personal and relevant to the recipient.
A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter. Wells Fargo uses this technique, sending customers a bi-monthly newsletter called a WellsWire®. To build a subscriber base for the newsletter, you should ask customers at the point of purchase if they would like to receive the newsletter. You should also promote the newsletter on the bank's website and provide customers with an online mechanism for subscribing (opting in).
With a foundation of opt-in contact information stored in a database, you can automatically send out promotional materials. Depending on the email system employed, you can also customize your promotions for specific market segments.
Email Marketing Services and CAN-SPAM Compliance
Because the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 authorized a monetary penalty per violation for spamming, many email marketers use an email service provider to help ensure compliance with the Act and to build a reputation as a non-SPAM sender. Reputable servicers typically require bulk email senders to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address, provide a one-click opt-out feature, and prohibit importing lists of purchased addresses that may not have given permission.
In addition to satisfying legal requirements, service providers also help customers to set up and manage email marketing campaigns. The service provider usually provides email templates, automatically processes opt-ins and opt-outs, and reports on campaign statistics, including delivery rates, open rates, click-throughs, forwards and conversions.
Five Tips for Selecting an Email Service Provider
- Type of System
Look for a comprehensive email campaign management system rather than a broadcast message distribution system. Email providers usually don't make the distinction in their advertising and marketing materials, but you should. A simple bulk distribution system will not have the value-added functions needed to plan and execute pre-scheduled campaigns and target appropriate recipient segments by filtering the database using campaign-specific criteria.
- Age of System
Make sure the system was developed after the enactment of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 or that it has been enhanced since then to facilitate CAN-SPAM compliance.
- Flexibility of System
Look for a system that supports automated opt-in/opt-out, recipient preferences, conditional content, live content, campaign testing, version sampling, remarketing, advanced customization and query, automated and/or recurring campaigns, bounce tracking, web inserts, redundancy blocking and viral marketing. Also ask about the underlying database. How much and what types of data can you store? The more functionality the system provides, the more targeted and effective your email marketing will be.
- Pricing
Most email service providers have volume-based pricing with monthly minimum charges. Make sure that the monthly minimum is reasonable for the volume of email marketing you intend to do. Also watch for hidden costs. Email service providers may charge extra for training and phone support (beyond a specified amount), campaign design and execution, image hosting, data loads, HTML error correction and other types of services.
- Service and Support
Make sure you clearly understand the services included in the contract and those available to you for a fee. For example, if you need assistance with creating and executing campaigns, make sure the email service provider can and will do that for you at a reasonable cost. Check on the telephone support. Is help available during your bank's hours of operation? Check on production times. When you submit a campaign, how much lead time is required for setup and testing, and how long does it stay queued in the system before it's executed? Ask about the data center. Does it maintain proper security and data backups?
