Six Steps to Instant Revenue: Successful Email Marketing Is Right Under Your Nose
If you believe that you know everything there is to know about email marketing, then you also probably believe Al Gore invented the Internet.
Unfortunately, for most marketers, email marketing remains an educated guess predicated on seasonal and industry trends. What most marketers do not realize is that they have an opportunity to send out intelligent, high-performance email campaigns based on true consumer desires. All they have to do is take advantage of information that is readily available.
Online behavior is not limited to purchasing activity alone. To truly understand someone's buying potential, you need to see more than that. You need to know what they are looking at, what they are searching for, and what they have recommended to friends. These online activities are just a few of the behaviors that allow marketers to gain a better understanding of what consumers are truly interested in.
The bottom line is that if marketers are not sending the right offers to their customers, they are essentially leaving dollars on the table as well as alienating customers.
There are also hidden costs associated with poor email campaigns. It may cost just a few dollars to send an offer out to a few thousand recipients, but if marketers continue to send out irrelevant email campaigns, reliable customers will chose to opt out—and recouping those lost subscribers is costly.
That's why marketers must retain customers and not degrade their experience by sending them irrelevant emails. Marketers can take advantage of online-behavior intelligence and send out targeted email campaigns at a lower frequency with higher relevancy. When they do, everyone wins.
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Sheldon Gilbert is the founder and CEO of Proclivity Systems (www.proclivitysystems.com), a provider of solutions that give marketers and merchandisers insight and foresight into online consumer behavior.
Comments
Thanks for the article - very appropriate to us right now. We are interested in future content surrounding the development of customer (retail building material suppliers, or even the building material consumer) communities around our company website.
Recent feedback has been indicating that simple text based emails are pulling better than elaborate html emails. It's somewhat like snail mail. If you get a letter that is handwritten in blue ink with a stamp on it. You are much more likely to open it than bulk mail. We've applied this to our email campaigns and have had some great results.
"If 10 percent of customers are responsible for 50 percent of sales, it would make sense that marketers treat them differently. Properly segmenting customers and sending them customized emails will increase sales and drive loyalty." Never thought of that excellent point you made.
Thank you for such an insightful article, Sheldon!