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Automated Campaigns. The Right at the Right Time

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Automated Campaigns

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WHITEPAPER:

THE RIGHT EMAIL AT THE RIGHT TIME

Email marketing is steadily gaining acceptance and increasing in popularity. Forrester Research has predicted that this segment of direct marketing could grow to 2 Billion US dollars.

This means that the number of commercial emails received per person per year could reach 9,000 by the year 2014.

Your customers’ inboxes are likely full to overflowing. Customers faced with a constantly full inbox may delete your messages before reading them – or worse yet, may mark them as spam. This makes it critical to respond to customer activity as quickly as possible, and to personalise messages to precisely meet your recipients’ need for information.

This is particularly crucial with a first email message, whether it’s a welcome message, a registration confirmation or a transaction confirmation. The longer you wait to respond to a registration or transaction, the higher the odds that the customer has already lost interest. Email accelerates the pace of customer communication, and it’s important for you and your company to keep up.

A customer may expect an answer to an enquiry within a matter of hours, if not minutes.

To give customers the feeling that they‘re getting the information they want, when they want it, it’s vital to respond to customer activity as soon as possible and to provide exactly the information the customer is expecting. Slow response times and irrelevant communications may even cost you some customers.

An email marketing process that sends the right content to the right customer at the right time is almost impossible to organise manually – at least not without a very significant investment of time and personnel.

What‘s more, current developments in your market sector and your company‘s overall online marketing strategy need to be kept in mind, as well. Manually planning and implementing an email marketing campaign that fulfils all of these criteria is all but impossible. To implement a sophisticated email marketing strategy, you will need to rely on a high-performance email marking software such as eC-messenger.

USING AUTOMATED EMAIL CAMPAIGNS TO REACH YOUR CUSTOMERS

Triggered Emails

A triggered email is automatically sent out by the email marketing software in response to a certain action or event. The triggering event could be a prede-fined customer activity, such as a new newsletter subscription or an abandoned online shopping cart.

The trigger could also be certain infor-mation contained in the customer pro-file. For example, a customer‘s birthday could trigger a birthday email.

A wide variety of other information can also be used to trigger email sendout - for example, a customer‘s purchase history or how much time has passed since the customer‘s last purchase.

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Consider the example of a bookseller whose biweekly customer newsletter advertises newly released titles and bestsellers – not just random titles, of course, but a selection of titles that reflects the interests of the individual recipients. At the same time, the bookseller must make sure that reduced-price publications aren‘t advertised to customers who have already purchased the publication at full price. Sophisticated email software makes this possible.

Automated Sendout: the motor of customer communication

„ Rapid Response to Online Activity With the right software, you can create automated campaigns that are highly personalised for individual customers, but which still adhere to the guidelines of your overall marketing strategy. In a very broad sense, these programs resemble the “out of office“ messages of any email server in that they respond almost instantaneously to any incoming mail with an automatically generated response.

Of course, a basic automated response system offers only a very limited, depersonalised solution. There are very few enquiries that can be answered with a single generic message.

Email marketing software, on the other hand, offers almost unlimited flexibility. Customer activity triggers the sendout of tailor-made email messages whose content precisely

reflects your customers‘ interests and needs.

A good example of how personalised emails can be used to increase sales is the email campaign of Limogos Jewelery (Marketing Sherpa: Triggered

Emails 2010). When customers abandoned their shopping carts in its online store, Limogos sent an email to encourage the customer to continue shopping.

To create a comparison test, one group of customers received only one message, while another group received a short series of emails. The ideal time for the sales pitch was also tested by sending messages at different times and comparing the conversion rates. The results were clear: the sooner customers received the email, the higher the odds that they would continue shopping.

The series of emails also proved effective. A second email containing an offer for free shipping was sent if there

EXAMPLES

Automated email series might include:

„ A series of welcome messages

„ Lead warming

„ Product recommendations

„ Reactivation campaigns

„ Registration processes

Abandoned-cart email #1: sent 3 hours after the customer left the site

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was no reaction to the first. The second email received 5-9% more clicks than the first.

In total, the success of the campaign speaks for itself: of 100 abandoned shopping experiences, it was possible to convince 28.8% of the recipients to return and complete the purchase.

„ Communication Opportunities Another advantage of automated campaigns is their high reliability. An automated email campaign sends out a high volume of personalised email messages in the desired form, at the desired time, without any need for increased personnel.

Messages such as order confirmation, notification of shipping and password inquiries are especially effectively handled by an automated system. Customers receive the necessary message almost instantaneously, and with no additional action on your part. These so-called “transactional emails” have an extremely high opening rate.

In fact, this is a great opportunity to communicate more information about your company or to advertise current product offerings.

For example, the company Center Parcs sends a transactional email to customers right before the start of their holidays. The email provides the customer with a reminder to check in online, but also contains offers for activities, spa services, and restaurants. Customers see this email as a booking confirmation, but it also motivates them to take advantage of additional offers.

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Triggered emails can include:

„ Welcome Messages or Series Sent after opt-in, these messages reduce the unsubscribe rate, contribute to a clean email list, encourage whitelisting and boost the subscription rate.

„ Event-based Emails

These can be used to reactivate inactive addresses or users, encourage customer retention, increase the lifetime value of a customer and promote sales.

„ Transactional Emails

Sent after a transaction, these emails can increase sales and upgrades.

(See MarketingSherpa: Best Practices in

Email Marketing Handbook 2009, p. 255.)

Flight bookings are augmented with additional information and offers Abandoned cart email #2: 24 hours later

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„ Save Time, Improve Service

Setting up a really effective system of email responses triggered by customer behaviours will require an initial investment of strategic planning time. Once the automated system is set up, however, the email sendout takes place automatically. The only further input required from you is a regular review of the effectiveness of the process. Message content can often be borrowed from other sources, and does not need to be manually entered in each email. For example, if you already offer up-to-date information bulletins on your website using RSS feeds, you can automatically add these RSS feeds to messages, as well.

The texts need only be entered in the CMS of your website; the email marketing tool gathers the entries, adapts them to the layout requirements of the message, and filters for information relevant for each recipient. The customer receives a high-quality newsletter covering exactly those topics that interest him– with no additional work for you! An email marketing tool can also create automatic replies to some kinds of customer enquiries. You can even connect your online shop database to your email marketing software so that certain customer inquiries actually initiate a search in the online shop. The result is automatically inserted into a new standard email message and sent to the customer.

Of course, creating, monitoring and updating these automated campaigns will take some time and creative marketing brainpower. Especially during the initial set-up phase, it is important to invest sufficient time and energy in developing a comprehensive strategy for your email campaigns.

Strategising: what to keep in mind „ How well do you know your email

recipients?

Automated email marketing systems respond to customer behaviour. To send optimal responses, you must know your customers and how they behave. This is a good opportunity to take a closer look at the data you have about your customers.

Start with reviewing your existing data, then ask yourself what additional information you might need about your customers. Are there unexplored sources of data right under your nose? Customer information can potentially be derived from support enquiries, website statistics, or telephone enquiries.

In the meantime, consider how you can best make use of the data you already have. Do you know how your existing customer data was generated, and what kinds of contact the customer has made with the company in the past? When does your customer display the most interest in your offers? Are there areas of your website that generate especially high traffic – and why is this the case? What kinds of offers generate

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Despite the full automation of the sendout process, the actual messages sent by eC-messenger can be individually tailored with personlised content and layouts. Integrating your company‘s online shop system makes it possible to react to shopping cart abandonment with current product information and a link to return to the already-filled shopping cart.

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the highest click rates? Are there regional differences? Regularly casting a critical eye on your data and statistics can help you to sharpen your strategy. The essential question to ask yourself is: are you making effective use of this information to send highly targeted email messages that will grab your reader‘s attention and generate sales? If you’re not, you could start by identifying patterns in customer activities to spot new opportunities for interaction. It‘s also important to identify any weak links in your communication chain, and to analyse abandoned shopping carts and unsubscribe requests for clues about where you need to improve.

„ Develop Targeted Email Strategies Using the information you‘ve derived from your customer data, you can clearly identify your target groups and their characteristics.

Simple strategies to better target your emails can be developed and set in practice. This is your chance to really explore the potential of your email marketing software.

You might also consider whether email campaigns can be used to gather further data about the recipients. For example, you can use the time of newsletter registration or the time when a welcome message was opened to determine when your customers are active in the internet: do they check

their email at home in the evenings, or on their lunchbreak at work?

When email inboxes are full, it can make a big difference in the opening rate whether your email lands at the top of the inbox… or at the bottom. Why not send your email at the time of day when your customer is actively checking his email? Just correlate the opening time of the welcome message and the sendout time of the next email, and you‘ve improved the odds that your email will be opened.

„ Recycling Content

If you‘re already communicating with your customers through several different channels, there is a good chance that you have existing content that could easily be recycled in an personalized email message.

Do you already provide your clients with regular RSS feeds, or keep a blog about new developments in your field? This content can be directly added to email messages. The text is automatically adapted to fit the email message template, and you just have to specify the time of sendout.

There may also be information in the online shop or even on your support pages that can be used to add content to your email campaigns by using the search feature. Take the time to review the various sources of content already available in your company and think about automatic recycling these texts in your email newsletters.

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Intelligently implemented, highly per-sonalised email campaigns offer a real competitve advantage in the market. Use email to set yourself apart from the competition!

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„ Test your Success

The more you tailor your messages to your audience, the higher the probability that you are effectively addressing your customers‘ interests. But to accurately measure campaign success, you need reliable feedback about whether customers really find your messages relevant. This review process can be for the most part automated, as well.

Start doing test runs before your campaigns, and send the final email to all recipients only after you’re sure you’ve identified the most successful version. The main sendout can be automatically performed by your system after the test cycle is completed. Of course, you will want to personally review the results of test campaigns, since they will contain valuable information for future sendouts. But over time, as available customer data increases, the customer mailings will become increasingly optimised. Another important element of successful customer communication is the frequency of emails. The goal is a delicate balance: customers should receive frequent messages, but should never feel overwhelmed with emails. One possible solution is to have customers indicate their contact frequency preferences when they register to receive emails. The message sendout frequency can then be regulated according to use preference.

„ Summary

When customer inboxes are already full of email advertisements, it‘s absolutely critical to send the right email at the right time. Using an automated email sendout system such as eC-messenger can help you achieve this goal.

With automated email software, you can react to customer behaviour by sending targeted, highly relevant emails. Personalised messages contain information your customers need and the content that really interests them. The result? High opening and click rates - and a high conversion rate. With the right software, you can develop an email communication strategy that goes far beyond transactional emails and registration confirmation. A successful email campaign uses all available customer data to craft messages that contain relevant content and highly personalised offers. Once implemented, such campaigns are highly effective and almost hands-off. Every customer activity - registration, online browsing, or a simple service email - presents your company with an opportunity for valuable interaction. With a sophisticated email software program, you can take advantage of every opportunity to make personalised contact.

An automated email software program capable of sending well-timed, highly- personalised email campaigns is an indispensible tool for every online marketing department.

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With eC-messenger from eCircle, it‘s incredibly easy to test which of your automated email messages has the highest conversion rate.

Just send out several versions of your message at the same time. After a prede-termined number of emails are received and opened by customers, the system will select the most successful version (accor-ding to click rate) and send this version to the remaining recipients.

Looking for more innovative ideas about effective email campaigns?

We‘d be happy to share our expertise. Call us at +44 (0)20 7618 4200 or send us an email at info-uk@ecircle.com.

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About eCircle: eCircle is one of the leading providers of online marketing services, providing state-of-the-art technology, permission marketing databases and professional services for email marketing to the words biggest brands. Since 1999 eCircle has stood for innovative and efficient email marketing for customer acquisition and retention. Leading organisations including Argos., HBOS and Samsung trust our consistent customer care, our long-term experience and not least our highly motivated and professional employees. The company has more than 200 employees, with headquarters in Munich and additional offices in London, Paris and Milan.

www.ecircle.com info-uk@ecircle.com

+44 (0)20 7618 4200

© eCircle Ltd., June 2011 Spain

eCircle Spain, S.L.U. Paseo de la Habana 9-11 28036 Madrid Germany eCircle GmbH Nymphenburger Höfe NY II Dachauer Str. 63 80335 München France eCircle SARL 10, rue du Fg Poissonnière 75010 Paris Italy eCircle S.r.l.

Via Pietro Orseolo, 12 20144 Mailand UK eCircle Ltd. 14 St John‘s Square London EC1M 4NL Netherlands eCircle Netherlands B.V. Zen Building Newtonlaan 115 3584 BH Utrecht

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