Articles
Spring into Action to Refresh Your E-mail program
Did you know that 25% of American business data is useless? This percentage in dollar terms is more than $ 2.5 billion dollars of business money going by the drain. Now imagine how this money could have increased productivity across the board for American businesses.
As marketers, we all sing in unison about the value of data. We use it to send relevant, timely, personalized email marketing promotions. But, do we set aside our efforts, time, or money to enhance the quality of customer data?
This is a serious issue for most businesses. However, the burgeoning data entering your business from all fronts seems hard to contain.
Call to Arms
Digital communication has spawned new ways of dealing with customers: blogs, social media networks, newsletters, email promotions, digital personas, to name a few. With the rise in noise levels, how do you get the attention of your customers?
If you watch superior business organizations, you'll learn one thing for sure. They follow personalized customer engagement. This intimate customer engagement model yields higher response, and higher Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI).
By benchmarking superior business, you can how to leverage customer data to fulfill the one-to-one marketing.
# 1 Priority for 2010 - Customer Data
Information changes in the blink of an eye, making your data obsolete or redundant. To adapt with the quick changes, you should take a closer look at your data.
But how do you go about organizing the mess?
Develop pre-defined processes to continuously validate and cleanse the data before it enters your system. Use data quality validations to filter exceptional data and impose quality monitoring and correction of data after every campaign. Apart from this, include the following key components in your enterprise-wide data activities:
- Take a hard look at the practices related to the collection and recording of data
- Establish a data custodian for every piece of information
- Develop periodic data scrub process
- Correct/update existing data quality problems
- Invest in analytical tools to help analyze customer data
- Review data quality though an ongoing process
- Track data problems to their source
- Manage processes to secure data quality
- Impart in-house training to achieve consistent data quality
- Arrange filters to stop bad data from entering your system
Data cleansing in an ongoing process; so is customer data acquisition. Apart from resourceful acquisition plan, boost email data acquisition through creative touch-ups to your program.
Here are 8 tactics to get more email subscribers
- Boost registration on your website
- Explain why consumers should subscribe
- Train and reward your employees
- Give a human touch to your program
- Append fresh new prospects to your data
- Leverage direct marketing channels
- Ask for customer referral Solicit existing subscribers to refer their colleagues or friends who would be interested in your programs. You can incentivize them to get them to do marketing for you.
Promote email sign-up at prominent places in your website. Channel the visitors to the top pages to register for newsletters.
Prompt customers through freebies like free shipping, offers, etc. to boost sign-up rates. Trigger welcome messages to new subscribers.
Educate employees in your organization to acquire customers email addresses through every customer touch point. Along with educating your employees, motivate them with rewards.
Send birthday emails to subscribers or use seasonal cards to show you care about them.
Email appending can add significant numbers to your email database. External data can infuse new prospects untapped by your promotions.
Use banner advertisements, direct mail and catalogs to promote email registration.
Take away:
Research has consistently proven the value of one-to-one personalized marketing messages. It's your pick to make the most out of it.
