Editorial Articles

Juliet Hills, Brand Manager at Magiq, explains how businesses can do more with their email campaigns to turn visitors into customers and customers into repeat customers.

With Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) becoming an increasingly competitive and saturated market, there is pressure on marketing activities to stand out from the crowd. In a climate where companies send broadcast emails to their entire mailing list on a regular basis, consumers have become deadened by indiscriminate email campaigns.

Emails will soon lose their power as customers become more and more frustrated by irrelevant timing and content from bad practitioners. Most email marketing campaigns also lack the personal touch. They may put your first name in the welcome line, but first time visitors and loyal customers alike get sent the same information. A targeted approach is the best way to avoid damaging your company's relationship with its customers and to build brand loyalty.

Broadcast mailing is a quick and cheap solution, but when emails are being spread on a 'confetti' basis, there is a good chance that they will remain unread, be deleted or - even worse - be unsubscribed. Companies seem to work on the principle that if they send out enough emails, a percentage of these will lead to sales, when in fact they could be doing more harm than good by frustrating and annoying their recipients.

If done accurately, more relevant and targeted email campaigns can increase a business's net profits by an average of eighteen times more than just using a broadcast mailing approach to potential customers. (Jupiter research – 10 Quick Wins for Email Marketing).

To optimise the potential of an email marketing campaign, it is important first to clearly identify and classify visitors to your site by monitoring their behaviour. Using the latest technology, you can take a snapshot of the choices a visitor has made and store this customer data in a format that is easy to utilise. This means that it is now possible to begin communication, ensuring that the information is relevant to the individual and the contact is time appropriate. It is important to remember that once you have begun communicating with the visitor it is vital to maintain this relationship and react to their changing interests.

Using behavioural monitoring technology enables you to see if a customer placed an item into a basket on a shopping site and then left the site without following through with a purchase. If you then send an email offering a discount or free delivery the next day, it may be the extra mile required to turn a browser into a buyer.

Following on from this, if you wished to maintain your customer base and build brand loyalty, you could look at the purchase history of the customer and send them a personalised offer relevant to their preferences. This may turn buyers into repeat buyers by instilling in them a confidence that the brand truly cares about their custom, valuing them enough to take the time to communicate with them effectively. Cross selling products that fit with their behavioural activity would demonstrate that you place importance on their repeated business.

In order to create an ongoing relationship with your customers, it is vital that the right information is monitored and used correctly. It is also important to make unsubscribing or opting out of unwanted emails an easy process. This will avoid the damage to the brand if customers who aren't interested still think you care enough to give them the choice. Managing the cascading flow of relevant and timely information from site visitors can mean the difference between a successful and a wasted email campaign. Like any CRM campaign, it is important to demonstrate that you know and understand your customers so that they see all aspects of your company in a positive light and keep you front of mind.

Juliet Hills, Brand Manager, Magiq

 

http://www.magiq.com