Over the years, the common goal for marketers and customer service decision makers is to increase revenues while lowering all of the costs associated with improving ROI. This particular goal has been hard to accomplish throughout the years therefore marketers has been working on trying to develop an integtagred system which will eliminate the insufficiency of traditional CRM, directmail, and web analytics tools.

In the recent years, with the arrival of the email, generating high response rates and a good ROI seemed to be relatively easy and it was absolutely easier than other direct marketing channels. Low cost email campaigns with a generic message sent to mass volumes generated more measurable return than any other effort.

As email marketing and other channels progressed, sending out a large number of campaigns without considering its impact on customer relationships, started to weaken the customer experience. Delivery of relevant, timely comminucations and building a customer dialog started to become vital for generating a good ROI.

Multi-Channel and Lifecycle Messaging is about mapping out the right marketing message and tactics to the lifecycle of the customer.

Here are the 5 steps of customer lifecycles;

1) Acquiring new prospects
2) Converting them to become your customers
3) Growing your customers base
4) Retaining them as your customers thru lifecycle, multi-channel programs
5) Recaptured the inactive customers thru re-engagement

In the upcoming weeks, we will get into the details of each step and how you can improve them.

Magento signup plugin Revotas Integration

Upon completion of the setup, the module will keep your Magento Newsletter subscribers automatically synchronized with Revotas.

Currently the code is beta, it is not submitted to MagentoConnect yet. But, it works like a charm and very helpful to Magento users.

With the Magento signup plugin you can create auto-response or trigger campaigns (e.g. thank you message, registration confirmation message, etc.) subsequent to subscription form filling.

Please contact with your account manager or support team to get the necessary information to active the module.

A simple welcome series might include an initial welcome message and a second message to educate customers on your brand, policies, or promotions. A long term welcome series strategy continually engages a customer using messaging with dynamic content based on behavior from prior emails and preference centers.

So, when you think about welcome messages, you should think about series and not just single email campaign.

Welcome Email Series Content Checklist

Email address added
Add to address book
Make sure to have privacy assurance and link
Link and instructions to change/update preference
Unsubscribe Link
How to get started
When the first email campaign will arrive
Resources, Documentation, Help and important links
“Your gift” incentive
“Your offer”
Your value proposotion
Upsell
Call to action

Here are some examples

1) Free Shipping On Your Next Order (click to view)
2) Free Shipping On Exclusive, Jewelry Products
3) Free Shipping + Great Handmade Jewelry Tips and Info
4) Feel Good Shopping + Get Free Shipping
5) Hurry, Your Free Shipping Offer Ends Tomorrow

Spam is traditionally defined as the bulk sending or posting of Unsolicited
Commercial Email (UCE) but there are several other email characteristics that are typical
of spam:

• The recipient would not have a “reasonable” expectation to receive the
communication from a company (i.e. no pre-existing business relationship
within the last few years).

• No mechanism or an invalid mechanism for the recipient to “unsubscribe”.
• A misleading “subject” line without a disclosure of the commercial nature of the
email (i.e. ADV for advertisement).

• Fake or non-existent “from” and “reply-to” addresses.

The rapid growth of spam is the result of the low cost of compiling email addresses (as
low as pennies per thousand addresses) and delivering unsolicited email. Spammers
can be profitable by sending out millions of messages and living with low response
rates of less than .01%.

Hotmail recently pushed another major update to help their users deal with the high amount of email they signed up for, called graymail, that will be slowly rolled out through the end of the year. While these tools will a major time saver for most Hotmail users, it could spell deliverability problems for your own email program. Here is a breakdown of the changes and what you should start thinking about now.

One-click Unsubscribe
The unsubscribe feature is not entirely new. Hotmail has had a safe unsubscribe link in the user interface for some time now, but how they handle these requests are changing and not complying could result in your email being sent to the spam folder. This feature has relied on the list-unsubscribe header to work properly.
Marketers can use either an unsubscribe URL or a MAILTO link in the header depending on their preference. If a subscriber clicks on the unsubscribe link in the Hotmail interface now, and either the list-unsubscribe header isn’t present or doesn’t work, email from that sender will be permanently delivered to the spam folder. It’s imperative that every sender has the list-unsubscribe header present now

What is list-unsubscribe ?
The List-Unsubscribe header is an optional chunk of text that email publishers and marketers can include in the header portion of the messages they send. Recipients don’t see the header itself, they see an Unsubscribe button they can click if they would like to automatically stop future messages.

Right now the header is used to enable an Unsubscribe button in Windows Live Beta (the next version of Hotmail) and for more than a million Cloudmark toolbar users. If history is any guide, we’ll see a similar feature in Outlook soon.

A List-Unsubscribe header might look like this:

From: josh@domain.com
Subject: [espc-tech] More info on List-Unsubscribe
Date: August 31, 2006 3:13:02 PM CDT
To: jasmine@domain.com
List-Unsubscribe: ,

As you can see, it supports both an email based (mailto) and web based (http) unsubscribe mechanism.

The header is defined in RFC 2369 which I wrote with Grant Neufeld back in college.

The List-Unsubscribe header has been widely adopted by software vendors and ISPs, such as Lyris, Majordomo, Microsoft Windows Live, SKYLIST, Yahoo! Groups, and many others.

Source: ReturnPath, List-Unsubscribe

Magento signup plugin Revotas Integration

Upon completion of the setup, the module will keep your Magento Newsletter subscribers automatically synchronized with Revotas.

Currently the code is beta, it is not submitted to MagentoConnect yet. But, it works like a charm and very helpful to Magento users.

With the Magento signup plugin you can create auto-response or trigger campaigns (e.g. thank you message, registration confirmation message, etc.) subsequent to subscription form filling.

Please contact with your account manager or support team to get the necessary information to active the module.

This is a great article by Jordie van Rijn on Email marketing solutions, the difference between Small, Mid-market and Enterprise.

Searching for a right-fit email marketing solution, it is good to know what area
of the market you need to look. The earlier you know where to look, the better.
Dividing the market is a great way to quickly go from a long to a short list of
potential email marketing solutions. It will enable you to search way more
efficiently.

So how can we divide the market? What are the differences
between email vendors ? And how to quickly assess in what segment an email
vendor is in?

Small market email marketing solutions

The small market email marketing solutions are perfectly fit for the
organisations that have little (feature) requirements. You are basically looking
for a way to send your simple emails, no fuss. The companies that use these
email marketing solution don’t have a big need for personal service or
consultancy from their ESP.

While some of the email tools in this market are only fit for sending small
amounts of email, don’t be fooled, other simple solutions are perfectly capable
of handling the largest amounts of email.

How to spot a small market email marketing solution

A small market email marketing solution has some of the following
characteristics:

• Usually put pricing on their website, might offer a  forever free email marketing plan or a free trial
• Most user support is self-service
• The end user support staff is much bigger than the implementation and
  consulting staff
• One size fits all contracts (if any)
• Reporting is usually very basic
• They don’t offer a campaigner for planning event driven mailings, at most an
  auto responder
• Openly offering affiliate programs is a much used sales tactic

Mid-market email marketing solutions

The mid market is the most blurred piece of the market. ESPs have specific
strong points, but might lack in others, so it is very important to know what
your requirements are and what you are expecting them to deliver. Things get a
bit more serious in the mid-market.

It is a good fit for businesses that are more ambitious and are in need for a
more extensive email program. Some of the email vendors here will offer full
service email marketing. Others will not, but will help you get set-up.

How to spot a mid-market email marketing solution

In the mid market, email marketing solution often have the following
characteristics:

• They can handle large amounts of email
• Can present a client case of a sophisticated email program
• Have at least a couple of big brand brand clients
• Have staff looking over your account or a fixed account manager

Enterprise market email marketing solutions

The enterprise market is where companies go when they need a sophisticated or
high level solution. Data, integration, deliverability and automation are key
when things get serious. Of course pricing is even so serious and these
suppliers as a rule of the thumb will not take on small clients.
It is a good
fit for businesses with scale (either in size or depth) that that are in need of
a sparring partner od that is on the same level. Enterprise market email
marketing solutions will still have their strong points, but have all the basics
covered.

How to spot an enterprise market email marketing solution

In the enterprise segment, email marketing solution often have the following
characteristics:

• Have many clients that do email marketing globally
• Often have high profile CEO and consultants on board
• Will offer a dedicated ‘success team’ if needed
• Will be able to complete the most complex data, automation and integration
  projects

While I was doing some research on the net, I came across the old article by Chad White from Email Insider.
I think this is great article that explains  Email Marketing is the only form of communication that is NOT owned by media.

“When looking at your brand’s marketing efforts, it can be helpful to look at the media channels you’re active in as paid, rented, owned or earned.

Paid media include ads on TV, radio and billboards;
Rented media include your social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter;
Owned media include your websites, blogs and mobile apps; and Earned media include PR and word of mouth
efforts, as well as content that is forwarded, shared, retweeted and liked.

In trying to assert the superiority of email marketing over social, some have asked, “Why would you pour money into building a social presence on a
platform that you don’t truly own, that you don’t control, and that can change without warning and without your input? By investing in email marketing, you are building an email list that you own.”

While there’s no doubt that social is a rented media, I wholly disagree that email marketing is an owned channel. It’s an earned channel. It’s earned through relevancy.

We earn the right to communicate with subscribers by first obtaining permission to email them — and then at least meeting their expectations by sending relevant messages at the right time and at a cadence that’s acceptable to them. We earn the right by listening to their opens, clicks, browsing, purchases and other interactions and responding with segmented emails, dynamic content and triggered messages. We also listen by collecting expressed preferences and engaging in progressive profiling.

Study after study shows that when we don’t listen and respond appropriately, relevance diminishes and email frequency becomes “too much.” Those are always the top two reasons that subscribers leave our lists, either via the unsubscribe link or the “report spam” button, depending in part on how much trust we’ve established.

Rather than dropping non-responders from your email list entirely, we recommend putting them into “cold storage,” a separate unmailed list where they stay until they purchase again. This approach can make re-permissioning a little easier to swallow. “

Welcome campaigns are one of your most important email campaigns because it provides the opportunity to individually engage recipients when they’re most interested.
But, when they are not executed correctly, it can create lot of frustration on the recipient side.

I saw the following cartoon on a website and I think explains what how recipients feel when things are not executed right.