Transactional email: have you considered the opportunities?

When it comes to email marketing we often overlook some of the less-obvious touch points because we are so focused on the bigger campaigns.

We compile brilliant email newsletters, to which we dedicate substantial amounts of time and energy, ensuring that the branding is exciting, consistent and aligned with the CI, while still providing relevant content. It goes without saying that we want our customer communication to be fantastic.

You are however probably unaware that some of your email communication to customers is poorly structured, almost never updated and usually not tracked at all.

Consider the following very important question: when was the last time you gave any serious consideration to your transactional email strategy?

We define transactional email as that which is automatically generated in response to an action. Examples of such messages are ‘thanks for subscribing’ or ‘your details have been updated.’

Transactional email provides fantastic opportunities for you to engage with your customers again, within an environment that is totally acceptable to them. And the word fantastic doesn’t overstate it. By applying a great design and accompanying the message with complementary messages – about new products, upcoming events or special offers– you create brand new opportunities to connect and sell. Coupled with transactional messaging, that includes tracking, you can also measure your upsell opportunities on these mediums, which could yield better results than traditional marketing mediums.

Examples of transactional email can be found everywhere. Browse a product set at Amazon.co.uk and you will be sent an email detailing specials and other options, based on the product category you were looking at. These emails usually consist of a single line of text, in a simple, text-based email though - when you think about it, that’s a massive opportunity lost!

As marketers, we’re always looking for great opportunities to extend our brand. How exciting to discover that you may have many unexploited ones in your portfolio right now.

Mia Papanicolaou
Head of eMarketing
www.striata.com

Will Social Media Kill the Email Star?

Social media is the next big thing. So much so, that some online gurus are predicting the death of email in favour of social media and social networking. It is said that the ‘traditional’ communication channels, namely email and instant messaging, are becoming obsolete and no longer fulfil the needs of online users. So, what are the needs of the Social Media generation? One of the trends identified by www.trendwatching.com is the concept of ‘nowism’. This trend translates into society’s requirement for instantaneous information from multiple channels. Although the requirement for ‘nowsim’ has been clearly established, a consolidated tool that provides for instantaneous information across all communication channels has not yet been developed.

Yes, ‘nowism’ is highlighted by social media, but this medium alone does not address the vast array of requirements that fall under ‘nowism’. Nielsen recently published a study in which they found that consumers of social media were also the highest consumers of email. In the United States, email usage grew by 21% in 2009 and social media by 31% during the same period. Email is now the anchor for business communications and with the rise of mobile email devices, the growth is set to continue for many years to come. The latest report “China Mobile Internet Market Survey in 2009 Q4” issued by Analysys International, shows that the subscribers of China Mobile Internet has touched 205 million. China Mobile accounts for 69.07% market share, China Unicom and China Telecom accounts for 27.20% and 3.73% respectively.

Gartner predicts that 20% of organisations will be using social media and networking tools as their key communication medium by 2014 - that leaves 80% using email and traditional communication methods. Let’s take a moment to imagine a corporate world where social media is used in replacement of email communication... There are the obvious advantages of transparent communication between employees:

• the medium encourages collaboration amongst its users,


• the information is never lost as it remains in the ‘cloud’,


• interactions are instantaneous and lag times between responses virtually eliminated,


• Spam no longer menaces inbound communications to your profile (although social media spam is on the rise).

One of the concerns around using social media, at the expense of email, is the blurred boundary between business and personal profiles of users. An email identifies you by a signature and domain, distinguishing between business and personal communication, whereas a social media profile may include information that that is inappropriate in a professional environment. In addition, do you want to share your personal information with everyone? If you drop your car off at a panel beater, would you want your client to receive your status update in this regard?

Social Media uses email as its primary promotional medium. You require an email address to join any social network and all notifications around activity on your profile are sent to your email address. Is a collaboration of the two mediums therefore not the answer to the two arguments? Google Buzz seems to think so. With the ability to share information publicly or privately, integrate messages with your email, take note of real time updates and connect with other social networking sites, it presents itself as the answer to all. All companies wish to increase employee productivity and as Robert Scoble blogs, “an application that allows a spam-free in-box in which e-mail, SMS, RSS, IM, voice, and video - even “tweets” if you like - can co-exist” may do just that.

Social media may just be the best supporting act to the Email Star !

Nicola Els
Head of eBilling
www.striata.com

The eStatement is Prime (Marketing) Real Estate

An electronic statement may not be as in-your-face as an outdoor billboard or as flashy as a TV ad, but it offers many qualities that make it an ideal place to practice some real one-to-one marketing.

Regular, expected, accepted, interactive . . . all of these add up to one thing: captive audience.

You know the recipient is going to look at the eBill (there’s money involved, isn’t there?) so why not use the package as a means to excite and engage your customer? Get the content and navigation right, and you could turn your eBill into an interactive, measurable, sales machine.

Let’s talk practicalities. There are a number of locations on the eBill which offer a marketing opportunity.

The email to which the eBill is attached has one key task – to deliver the attachment. Why not put it to use to cross- or up-sell? Not only are you assured that your recipient will at least glance in that direction, but you can also measure your marketing efforts by tracking click-through rates to identify what works in that space.

I’m sure all marketing gurus wish they had that kind of feedback capability on outdoor advertising. Imagine we could measure how many eyeballs noticed a banner . . . oh but wait, you can’t interact with a banner!

Then there’s the eBill landing page: the first page the customer sees on opening the encrypted attachment. Its primary job is navigation, but there’s no reason it can’t be used to pull traffic to your latest website offering.

Standard web navigation rules apply: top right hand corner is most noticed and definitely don’t expect response to any marketing that is placed below the fold. Also don’t be tempted to make your marketing messages ‘optional’. Additional navigation choices in the eBill such as a ‘Promotions’ tab, will not pull traffic unless there is a hook, and a good one at that.

But wait, there’s more . . . remember this is a one-on-one communication so if you have the right information about your customer you can tailor the marketing messages in the eBill to promote what is relevant to that customer. Brainwave!

So what’s the drawback? Well . . . there isn’t one really. You’re already sending the eBill, adding marketing content is not going to increase the costs, and all your efforts are immediately measurable, so you can adjust your strategy as you go along.

Okay, there might be SOME people who are worried about direct marketing rules and whether the right to refuse marketing extends to the right to refuse marketing messages in an operational communication. But that’s a different discussion for another time.

Alison Treadaway
Managing Director, Striata Africa
www.striata.com