Date: 19/1/2012
Author: Robert Dow
Now that the New Year has passed, many of us are taking stock and looking to the future (and not just our waistlines). Here are our top 5 tips to consider when planning this year's email strategy:
1. Data Cleansing
Clean data protects your brand, increases response and provides accurate reporting. Ensure your customer database has been regularly updated with strategies for hard and soft bounces, running against the latest suppression files and removing unsubscribes before the next communication. If you are buying in lists, make sure the data purchased is both recent and relevant.
2. Personalisation
Targeting your customers with appropriate content will drive response rates. By using their names, referring to previous purchases and serving dynamic content based on their previous email click through rates, you can demonstrate that you care about what they like. This is particularly effective if you have a broad range of products and services that appeal to many different customers.
3. Timing
Contact your customers too often and they will unsubscribe, too infrequently and you will not be engaging them. Times of day will also have an impact on open rates. Confirmation or triggered emails should be provided to your customers as and when they are most useful.
4. Browser
It is important that your customers can read and enjoy your email. You can check if they can do this by viewing the email in popular web browsers, such as; Firefox, Chrome and Safari and also against web based email clients; Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc, to see how your content is being interpreted. As internet ready mobile devices become increasingly popular, it is worth considering their browsers; iPhone's Mobile Safari and Android's Opera Mini.
5. Tracking
Track the success of your data selections, content and promotions and continue to build on your efforts. Establish a control group to monitor campaigns against, accounting for customers who would have responded anyway. This will provide better accuracy when calculating the ROI of your campaigns.
We hope you have found these tips helpful. From everyone at InDzine we wish you the best of luck and a prosperous New Year!
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