PILLAR III. Email Marketing

Email marketing is easily the most underrated and underutilized of the 6 PILLARS. The primary reasons for this are – a) spam has us nervous about all the rules; b) the lack of easy-to-use subscription management systems; c) poor tracking and customer behavior analysis tools; and d) lack of consistency and creativity in messaging.

Given most clients lack of an integrated CRM (Customer Relationship Management software), which impacts what we know about customers, this PILLAR is of particular concern and importance. Organizing the email marketing strategy is likely to have the greatest and most immediately recognizable ROI of all PILLARS in Client’s case.

A detailed level of targeting and campaign development around different customer and prospect segments, and timing within the shopping process, will be entailed in the email strategy. At least two new email campaigns per month will be designed and deployed as part of Phase 1, including auto-notifications to prospective clients and interaction with the dealer community. Further, transmissions include integration of Client blog into emails for select segments.

Recommended tactics are listed herein:

1. List Management - Services include data hygiene, multi-group segmentation, subscription/delivery option management and spam compliance. Clearly, higher readership emerges when customers are given options on how often (weekly, monthly, other) and which content they wish to receive (promotions vs. advice).
2. HTML Email Design - Applying A/B testing against various segments has proven the effectiveness of targeted, HTML emails. Blueliner will conceive and if necessary, create email campaigns that garner high conversion rates from both existing and prospective customers.
3. Secure Transmissions - The transmission of spam-free, email campaigns will be managed by Blueliner. Double opt-in procedures, if required by Client or the ISP, may be implemented for both email and phone subscribers.
4. Campaign Tracking - Blueliner will track average read, open, bounce and conversion rates for Client email promotions and campaigns, down to a market segment and user level. This data will be cross-referenced with search engine, keyword and other marketing data in order to draw conclusions such as the following - "Customers who came in via 'children bedroom furniture' search tend to read emails at a 25% higher rate than the average Client customer." Tracking is the best tool available to Client for the development of future email creative and content strategy.