etailology

Reaching Existing Customers Through Email:
For existing customers, I generally think of email marketing efforts as forming three major categories of intent. These three types represent what marketers are trying to accomplish by sending the email message — though, obviously each time you email your customers, it’s more than likely a blend of these three types — as it should be,

1. Retention Email: Sometimes called “CRM Email”, Retention Email generally takes the form of newsletters or editorial content. While this sort of interaction with the customer is admirable in and of itself, it’s also important to have something to say Endless coupons or promotions are often used as a substitute for real content — and that can be a costly approach.
2. Servicing Email: Servicing emails include items such order receipts, shipping notifications, customer service followups, etc. Since these types of emails generally receive much higher user attention than other emails you might send, it’s important to capitalize on them. First, be sure to include key advertising or loyalty program messages in these emails, and second, send more of them! Customers gush over receiving an appropriate level of status notifications from etailers, and in my experience most etailers send far fewer than what users’ consider appropriate.
3. Segmentation Email: The third major activity that (smart) marketers try to conduct via email is to enhance customer profiling information through email response. What that means is that the email solicits a response which provides key data (soft or hard) about the customer, around which their profile can be more accurately managed. This is best done when there is something in it for the customer — for example, sign up for different categories of offers, not just a single “deal” eblast.

Generating Traffic Through Email:
In similar fashion, there are generally three types of email communications which are used to generate new traffic for your site:

1. House Lists: House lists can be a great source of new traffic for your site. How? Through a referral mailing. Sometimes it works best if you simply come out and ask your current customers to pass your name along. Design these emails to make that process easy.
2. Purchased, “Opt In” Lists: Beware, unless you are buying the list directly from someone with a peerless reputation — who owns the platform and content through which the email addresses were gathered for clearly non-evil purposes (which, btw, probably means they wouldn’t sell it to you!) — you should probably steer clear of opt-in lists entirely. The truth is, most opt-in lists… aren’t. (And, incidentally, you open yourself up to even more spam by unsubscribing from disreputable email lists — clicking the link informs spammers that their message was delivered to a “real address” and makes it easier to resell your information.)
3. Email Sponsorships: Email sponsorships are when you rent advertising/sponsorship space on someone else’s email newsletter or subscription email. Reputable, targeted, and ethically unambiguous, I highly recommend this form of communication as a way of capturing new customers through email. One more tip? Look in non-obvious places for email lists to sponsor… you might be surprised to find out that places like your local grocery store could have a list of 500,000 nicely segmented addresses with a high click-through rate.

Finally, Some Additional Insight and Tips:

• Integrating Email and Analytics: It’s important to integrate email into your analytics view; doing so not only increases your total view of how customers interact with your site, but the resulting insight can really drive sales.
• Centralize your outbound email distribution management for a more efficient and better managed customer experience.
• iMedia shares some of “The Costly Mistakes Email Marketers Make“
• Email 101: What to do when your email marketing doesn’t seem to work.
• Lastly, don’t forget that “email is for old people” and that to reach the youth market (and, increasingly, other markets as well) you really need to get mobile and do text messaging.
• Instant mobile marketing campaign: sign up for an account on Twitter and ask your customers to follow you.

[techtags: email+marketing, etail, email+marketing+tips, types+of+email+marketing, service+emails, transactional+emails]