Email is considered by the majority of marketers to be cost effective, flexible and efficient marketing channel. It’s also well known to provide excellent return on investment. In fact, authorization based email marketing can achieve up to five times greater response than direct mail. Add to this, emails’ ability to drive traffic straight to your site, build your brand, support your business and expand relationships. It’s not surprising so many businesses are using email in their marketing campaigns.

It’s not only the marketer that reaps the rewards. The number of consumers opting in to receive emails is on the increase. But what’s in it for them?

Today’s consumer uses email for work and personal communication. They want to be the first to know about offers and product information and events. Especially from businesses they have already purchased from. Email provides them with an interactive, easy to admission and controllable communication path.

Control is key for the present consumer. They want to choose what they receive and when they receive it. With email they have this control. At the point of opting in, a company can easily offer the consumer choice. When an email arrives in the inbox, the recipient can control opening, clicking and opting out. They can also easily share emails with friends, colleagues and family. All this at the click of a button. No hassle, no waste and maximum control.

With email the consumer can receive an engaging and personalised service. The marketer has flexibility, speed of delivery and return on investment. These mutual benefits for both marketer and consumer help to ensure that your business can compete in the modern, fast paced marketing environment where consumers are more informed and confident than ever before.

Building customers and a prospect database is one
of the most vital things you’ll ever do for your company. In this topic we’ll look at why your database is the best money can buy and tips for collecting customers information.

Why is your in-house database better than others?

Here are three reasons why your in-house database is the best data money can buy:

• The people on your in-house list have previously shown an interest in your business.
• You’ll be in contact with the right person. This helps to avoid wasting time and money.
• People who have bought a product or service from you before are more likely to buy again or recommend you to someone else.

Ask yourself this question, do we really use our list? Do we collect data at every opportunity? If you’re not using it you’re losing it. Businesses and people are always changing. This can result in your database going out of date extremely quickly. A simple email once a month can help you monitor any changes in your database. Noticing changes to email addresses is quick, easy and very low cost. You can then use this information to check that the person is still contactable and update your database accordingly.

What data should you collect?

Collect as much as you can. The most important data to collect is:

• Name
• Address
• Email address

If you’re one of the lucky one’s and your customers are very open with their personal data then collect more. If they’re not, collect a small amount of data at the first chance and then build on this over time. People will often tell you more at a later date because they have built trust and have a better understanding of how you will use the data.

Above all else keep it simple, you can always ask for more. Ensure that you can store the data efficiently and that you will use it. The more data you collect the more data organization you’ll need to do at a later date.

But what does the reader actually care about? We think it’s time we integrate the user experience into our industry’s best practice. Before anybody in my team can start working on designing contact strategies for our clients, we refer to this reader’s checklist to make certain we keep the most important issues in memory.

The reader expects. - Your readers gave you their email addresses because they were expecting something. A report, advert report, or anythink similar. Does the next email you send give them information they expect to see?

Understand that a lot of readers forget quickly. In many situations, readers sign up for your email because they want access to something or as an impulse opt-in. If you wait too long before getting in tough with them, they will forget why you were so important to them. Thin about this when timing your next email.

Where does the email take the reader in the site? Knowing how far in the website the email links your readers is important. Your tone of voice and information should match the target page very exactingly. This makes sure that, the transition makes sense to the reader.

Define success metrics first. Reader interest is not determined by the number of emails delivered. It’s derived from the click-to-open rate. Set a target before you send so you can benchmark yourself on success.

Look at the e-mail landscape. Just because it’s not a marketing email doesn’t mean the reader doesn’t receive other email from your company. This is key to determining send frequency. It’s not about what your company’s policy is, it’s about the reader’s experience.

What are your competitors sending? It may not be your company’s email that turns off the reader. It could be the volume of email in the category itself. If the reader subscribes to financial advice email from seven companies and you all send on the same day, the recipient won’t read any of them. This isn’t your fault, unless you knew about the bottleneck. But it’s your responsibility to find out what makes sense from a broader perspective.

These are just highlights from a pretty broad checklist. Yet they paint a strong picture of the challenges readers are subjected to and the marketing and sending side often forget to consider. Ask yourself these questions when you plot the next policy and see if they make any difference.

It reports that the number of consumers opting in to receive emails is on the rise.