When Automised Email Marketing Just Doesn’t Work, Email Marketing, Business Web Hosting, Web Design

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• When Automised Email Marketing Just Doesn’t Work

  • Date: 12/08/09

  • Category: Email Marketing

  The whole idea of email marketing is an attempt to establish regular communication with a current or prospective consumer in order to build a long-term, trusting relationship. Essentially, the development of email marketing software is a progression towards a fully automatised mode of communication, removing all effort on the sender’s behalf to a few clicks.

  No email marketer would admit that their email marketing software is simply a substitute for their personal input, but we can view all communication via email which is part of an email marketing campaign as a replication of the acknowledgment a customer would receive in the real world.

  Email marketing has order confirmations and thank you emails to mimic the cordial processes one would expect to undergo in real life commerce. Many would see this as a crucial advantage of email marketing; it saves time and money, but still maintains a personal touch for consumers whilst offering the opportunity to increase personalisation by including first names and exploiting interests and demographics offered at the sign-up stage.

  However, sometimes it is more advantageous to resist automatisation and add a personal touch. This isn’t to say that hand writing individual letters to thousands and thousands of subscribers is in any way beneficial or even worth your time.

  But here are some instances where it may be useful to consider topping off your email marketing process with a different form of personalisation, or even offline personalisation.

  • If your software is able to highlight customers who have spent more than the average, it could be useful to get your director or sales manager to send them a personal email to thank them for their custom.
  • The same applies to a customer who purchases more items than the average customer, or have come back and bought from you more than the average customer. You could even reward loyal customers by sending them a personal message if they have been on your subscribers’ lists for a designated period of time.
  • This principle can also be applied to those customers who appear to be promoting your product by reviewing or blogging on websites and directing traffic back to your website. This sort of promotion is what most marketers or SEOs would dream of, so surely it deserves some special attention?
  • Personalisation can work particularly well if a subscriber has signed up using an offline source. It doesn’t take much to include a short message before the newsletter thanking the customer for signing up; for example, if a customer signs up in-store, you might want to include a short message from the store manager.

  Remember that increased personalisation doesn’t always have to be electronic. If the subscriber has given you permission, contact them by post or phone and really blow them away by showing how much you value their interest.