Media Magic Weblog

I’m sure we all know what e-mail marketing is. Our in-box is inundated everyday with e-mails from our favorite companies. Some we immediately delete, but others catch our attention and motivate us to make a purchase, check-out the latest collection, visit their website or take advantage of an online coupon.

As marketers a majority of us rely heavily on the results an effective e-mail campaign can produce. However, it’s easy to let our e-mail campaigns go stale. Email programs should never be on autopilot. There are great features and capabilities that should be part of your email marketing toolkit. For a well-rounded program, you should include the following features to shake things up a bit!:

A preference center. Today the power is in the hands of your recipients. Make sure they can alter their information and preferences. If you already have such a facility in place, perhaps it is time to add additional features, such as giving them the choice to indicate specific topics or products of interest or the ability to decide how often they want to hear from you.

Triggered messaging. If you are an e-commerce marketer, you should definitely have an abandoned-shopping-cart program in place to recapture lost sales. Consider putting triggered messaging in place for email recipients who clicked through to your site and browsed, but did not purchase. You might start this simply and choose only your top products or services. Or, launch a cross-sell initiative for purchasers. Each of these techniques will improve the relevance of your programs and increase sales.

Segmentation. This is important to your email success and should be part of your communications strategy. Some common elements used to segment are geography, gender, past purchase behavior, demonstrated interest from click-throughs, and the length of time the person has been on the list. If you’re not segmenting, set a goal to test one or two factors. If you already see the value of using this technique, it’s time to test additional groups. Dynamic personalization makes it relatively easy to set up and monitor results.

Social networking. There’s certainly a lot of buzz about blogs and customer reviews. They may not be right for everyone, but more marketers are experimenting with ways to increase interaction and the overall user experience on their sites. And, email is a perfect way to promote any new features you incorporate into your online presence.