Question

Topic: E-Marketing

How Many Lists To Use For Pre-sale/special Offers?

Posted by Anonymous on 3/14/2006 at 2:41 PM ET 250 Points
We are an organization with a broad product/service line. We are developing our strategy for e-mail marketing using a new e-mail service, and have run into a difficult issue.

We currently have several existing e-mail newsletters that we consider "product updates". We send those people mostly post-sale information on a regular basis, including enhancement announcements, support information, and up-sell/cross-sell offers. Each newsletter has its own "list" in the e-mail service.

We are thinking we need to have a "Special Offers" list or set of lists for people who have expressed interest via webinar registrations and similar pre-sale vehicles. These people would receive information/offers on a less regular schedule.

Does it make more sense to have a single "Special Offers" list that uses segmentation rules to determine who gets what message/product offer, or should we have lists for each product line? People are concerned with using a single list because people could opt-out of all "Special Offers", but a single list would offer more flexibility in what was sent, it seems.
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  • Posted on 3/14/2006 at 3:24 PM Author
    Thanks all. I'd just like to clarify my question a bit. We certainly intend on sending specific Special Offers to only relevant subscribers.

    But, logistically, is it better to set up one list with various product preferences/attributes or set up multiple lists---one for each product preference?

    I realize some of this depends on the e-mail marketing system used, but would like to know how others have handled this in their systems.
  • Posted by steven.alker on 3/15/2006 at 4:18 AM Accepted
    I would say that it is vital to keep everything on one list and segment it accordingly. If you keep separate lists, even as separate databases on the same CRM system, you will have a nightmare trying to follow up who has responded to what, how, when and why. You will end up with reminders to do things pinging off on databases which are not open and duplication of effort where the same company has many contacts which may each have many mailing preferences.

    Keep one list.

    Differentiate the contacts by the items they have opted in for. Use this differentiator (It can be a field with a table of values which equate to the campaigns you want to run) to choose which email campaign the contact receives. It could be campaign A, Campaign B, Campaign C or Campaigns A and C (Tick two boxes – or three!)

    Personalise the contact information so that you can personalise the email.

    Have a separate email for each campaign and for each product. You can, by using email-merge, personalise the email from data held against the contact record or even from their last response to an email!

    If your CRM system permits it have an overriding “Exclude from contact by -----” field which will disable accidental inclusion in automated campaigns. For example, Maximizer has 4 standard exclude functions, (email, fax, phone and mail) but you can add to them with email1, email2, email3, email special offer A etc.

    Track the responses to ensure that you respond to changes in preferences.

    If you are utilising large lists, try KnowledgeSync or Workflow Automation which is standard with Maximizer, SalesLogix and some other CRM systems. It will pick up categories of email response; openings click throughs and most importantly exclude / include requests automatically.

    This is important if your responses are in the hundreds, as human error is the second largest reason for companies being fined for SPAM violations. The first reason is ignorance. Greed would be the first but the greedy hide offshore!

    I hope that this makes sense – Only 10 years ago, we used to keep all our different lists with different functions on separate databases because by and large, a single database on an office PC or server would not be able to handle the numbers.

    This is no longer the case and a mid market solution like Maximizer will easily accommodate a database of 5 Million Records (We’ve tested it with the UK telephone directory which is about 37 Million!) and from 1 to 1000+ users, so keeping all your functionality on the same database or CRM system now makes such a lot of sense, we nearly always recommend it.

    Steve Alker
    Unimax Solutions
  • Posted by james on 3/15/2006 at 6:40 AM Member
    I just keep one list for all my products. The thing is how and what you would like to collect people's details to make your list robust.

    it might not always be good to categorize customers by product. For example, if you've developed a new product, you might want to send an offer to people/leads based on their interest AND affordability, not just their preference, i.e. judging by their income/number of employees, etc.

    you would be happy to have one list with loads of leads' attributes on it.

    regards,
    jim
  • Posted by ROIHUNTER on 3/15/2006 at 9:47 AM Accepted
    mickeyhawk,

    The simple answer to the question is one list. The key reason being you need to be able to have the person opt-out from all communications. If this responsibility is spread over many lists, you may find yourself breaking several laws and be fined heavily.

    The implementation and management of segmentation is dependent on the capabilities of the technology you are using or planning to purchase.

    Whether you have a 'special offers' list that must be cleaned before each send, or several fields in a Master list that are used to export a clean list, really becomes an issue what you feel more comfortable with implementing.

    Hope that helps,
  • Posted on 3/21/2006 at 10:47 AM Author
    I just wanted to thank everyone for responding to this question. Still wrangling over the specifics on this end of how we are handling the list(s).

    One thing that I should mention is that the email system we are using allows us to manage subscribers somewhat independent of lists.

    We can have preferences and other custom fields for subscribers while also having them on several lists. Also, we can provide a global opt-out that applies to all lists as well as individual list opt-outs.

    So, with all of this capability comes many decisions, including integration with our CRM.

    Thanks again to all.
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