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aintaining continuity with your installed base is key for establishing
and maintaining long-term relationships with your customers.
It is the foundation for maximizing the lifetime value of the
names hidden deep within your internal house file from activities
such as upgrades and product cross-sells. Carefully planned
Email activities, together with your web site, are extremely
efficient and cost-effective tools for staying in the forefront
with your customers and buyers.
From our own hands-on experience with Email messaging to
our clients (media brokers, ad agencies, and mailers), there
are several key points that should be taken into consideration
for maximizing effectiveness while respecting an individual's
privacy.
Collection and warehousing of Email data: For effective
use of Email data, it is critical that you implement standardized
collection procedures and formats for easy integration into
your main database.
Keep in mind that all points of customer contact, whether
it is registration cards, forms on your web site, direct response
ads, or even inbound calls to your 800 number, should prompt
for the collection of Email data.
When collecting the Email address, make sure to also collect
the name of the online service used (i.e. AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve,
etc.). The two components combined allow the structuring of
a valid Internet address (i.e. the America Online address
Joe5 translates to the standard Internet address joe5@aol.com).
Since an Internet address can sometimes be extremely long,
it is not uncommon to allocate 35 characters or more for accommodating
this field in your house file.
Email etiquette: A few simple
rules will ensure smooth operation of your Email activities.
First, messages should be sent to your customers. Though there
have been past attempts in launching rentable Email lists
based on forced compilation of chat-room attendance, the individuals
on such lists are not receptive to unsolicited Email.
Second, your 'RE:' line should clearly state the overall
content contained in the message. This allows the recipient
to easily decide whether or not they want to read you mail.
Last but not least, keep it short. Edit your content so that
the entire message can be read in one screen, without scrolling.
Formatting in an ASCII world:
Email is plain text - no selectable fonts, no color or graphics.
However, there are a few tricks that can be used to give your
content a more palatable format. Make use of centering with
imbedded spaces, calculating on a width of 60 characters,
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so as to avoid wrap-around from a narrow default
window. Make use of ALL CAPS and T I T L E S with spaces between
each letter to emphasize a particular point. Use consistent
indentations, make use of the underline and asterisks for drawing
boxes -- be creative with the text! You'll be surprised how
well your content can look with these simple formatting techniques.
Keycoding your Email: A
simple way of coding your Email is by carefully selecting
the address of 'who' it is sent from. Think about it -- if
your Email elicits a response, it is not uncommon for the
recipient to hit the 'reply' button within their Email software.
Planned creation of an originating Email account for response
tracking purposes is a simple yet effective technique.
Leverage your web site:
You might use the Email message to direct an individual to
a private URL on your web site. The private URL could contain
expanded information based on the core content of the Email,
making use of the full interactive and multimedia capabilities
of the web. While they are at your site, you might want to
take advantage of the web's powerful ability to display forms
and collect additional information. Once again, it is still
very important to respect an individual's privacy. Some organizations
make use of the 'cookie file' technology that is built into
some of the popular web browsers.
The cookie file technology (locate and view 'COOKIES.TXT',
normally found in your browser directory) allows information
to be read from or written to a visitor's hard drive, without
their knowledge. Information such as which sites were visited
can be stored, read, and used -- all of which, in my opinion,
is a direct violation to an individuals privacy. You should
avoid using this technology and also avoid those marketing
programs and advertising placement services that use this
technology for targeting prospects on the web. Respecting
an individual's privacy is key for overall long-term success
of electronic marketing.
As a closing thought, you should also ask for permission
to share the Email address. A non-intrusive statement has
been used by many traditional direct mail marketers "...from
time to time, we will share your Email address with other
vendors who we feel offer products and services that will
be of value to you. If you want to participate in this program,
click here.' This will pave the way for future Email name
rental and prospecting programs that have the full consent
from the individual.
Combined, the above techniques will help you mount an effective,
long-term Email campaign that will help you communicate with
your customers and strengthen your relationships with them.
Its easy integration into your current installed-based activities,
low cost, and profit potentials classify it as a direct marketing
activity that cannot be overlooked.
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