High tech email marketing features that deliver results October 28, 2008
Posted by Mindy Dolan in email marketing.Tags: automated email reports, drip campaigns, dynamic content, email marketing features, email marketing program, email solutions, flexible templates, high tech email features, integrating API, integrating Google Analytics, lead lifecycle campaigns, lead nurturing programs, lead scoring, relevant content, triggers
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It’s obviously important to keep in contact with your customers on a regular basis – it’s part of the ongoing sales cycle. However, these days, customers have different needs and don’t all follow the same path. Email marketers develop killer campaigns for all the stages of the cycle and yet typically have a difficult time implementing them effectively within an email marketing system. Amazingly enough, even the most popular email service providers have a difficult time integrating all the key programs that lead to an email marketers success.
So we sat back and thought about this for awhile. What are the ideal features (beyond the basics) for an email service provider to offer, that would allow a marketer to operate a fully functional and successful email program at no or a low additional cost?
- Client data or content management system integrated into the email service provider’s system.
- Easy way to create and deliver tailored and relevant email for each subscriber dynamically.
- Combine marketing and sales email camplaign efforts by creating flexible templates that can be changed centrally in the system and then dynamically insert different salesperson imagery, content, and contact information.
- Lead scoring and nurturing programs built into the system.
- Automated drip campaigns/triggers delivered based on subscriber open/click behavior.
- Reports automatically emailed to the team a set time after the broadcast has been delivered.
- Google Analytics integration with the system so that clicks are seamlessly tracked once the subscriber leaves the newsletter and lands on the website.
If you’re an email marketer or a sales person looking for a way to truly connect with your subscribers, then these are the tools you need to get there. Ask your email service provider to put a program like this together for you. If they’re not able to provide these solutions for you, then you need to start looking for a provider who can. Features like these don’t need to cost you an additional $5,000-10,000 a month. If you can’t find a provider who can offer you these features, then call us – we can!
Hi,
Nice job, these features are all nice and – I agree – necessary for a performing email marketing plan.
Thus, I would add some features to the list such as:
- Possibility to display the campaign statistics according to users’ profiles (gender, age, subscription date, domain,…)
- ROI tracking (might match your analytics point though)
- FBL (complaints) statistics on each broadcasted campaigns.
Cheers
email marketing seems kinda old-school. Sure it brings results but right now most people associate mails like this with spam. And this isn’t good for business.
We’ve heard people refer to email marketing as old-school, however email marketing budgets are being increased more and more because of the effectiveness email marketing has on recipients. Of course you have those that abuse email marketing and leave a bad impression for those who are doing it right. The most important thing for email marketing is that those using it are sending relevant content to consumers who have opted in to receiving it. Most high-end reputable email marketing companies stress this to their clients, which doesn’t mean a lot to the end user necessarily, but it’s becoming harder and harder for spammers to find a reputable email marketing company to partner with to deliver their messages. It’s all about educating clients on how to be better email marketers so that we change the way email is perceived.
Emal marketing has also come a long way since the beginning, and now several companies are integrating with social media in order to help companies get their message out. The “share to social” idea is catching on and bringing new life to email marketing.
Hmm, this looks interesting. So far I’ve been doing all these “by hand”, using several programs like Excel and Outlook to manage and send my clients the data they need.
Something that would combine all these features into one package, now that would be great. With software like this, I could save up to 30 minutes every day. That’s 30 extra minutes of sleep and who could say no to that ?