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Posts Tagged ‘Product Recommendations’

I recently took my 9 year old daughter to Justice, a children’s apparel retailer. From the onset the manager bombarded me, at 5 minute intervals, with product recommendations and promotions. This continued for 30 minutes until I was forced to school her on customer insight and preferences.

A bad email program is much like an ineffective sales person. Instead of having to read the disinterest on the faces of your customers, feel the negative impact on sales, or in my case, hear the harshness of their words; email marketing can tell you almost everything you need to know about your customers and help you to sell more.

Going Beyond “Hi FNAME”

The insight required to make your email program more profitable is already at your finger tips and it’s inexpensive. It comes to you in the form of data. I don’t mean open and click data, although that will tell you a lot, I’m talking about data that will allow you to personalize the experience for each of your customers.

Sure, personalized greetings are often well-received but as I mentioned in a recent Chief Marketer article, this year’s standout Valentine’s Day campaigns were those that used deeper data, such as purchase history and customer profiles, to make their offers more personal and therefore more relevant. In the article, I was speaking largely about retailers but service companies too have a slew of easily accessible data to track (or even predict) the purchase intent of their customers as well as identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

What Do You Have to Work With?

The sources of actionable data are seemingly endless, but here are few categories and specific examples:

Profile: Imagine you run a travel agency and I’m your 65 y/o prospect, do you think I’d respond better to an offer that reflected the most popular senior destinations? Now imagine that the images in the offer were those of the silver-haired persuasion. Or perhaps I’m on west coast time and your webinar is schedule for 1pm eastern, would I be more likely to reserve my seat if the email read 11am pacific?

Purchase History: If I bought gifts in or around today’s date, two years in a row, might I want to buy another again this year? What if the new gift recommendations were in line with my previous purchases of those of other gift buyers? Conversely, what if I’ve already purchased your primary product, do you think that I want to hear about how much money I could have saved, if only I’d waited? Instead, wouldn’t I rather know about your secondary offerings?

Activity: Maybe I’ve downloaded three sequential white papers in 30 days, but I’ve yet to make a purchase, would it be a good idea to invite me into a discussion about my specific needs? Or maybe I haven’t responded to your offers in some time, am I perfect for a reactivation offer or satisfaction survey?

Preferences: Imagine that you have 10 different products but I’m a reseller that’s only interested on products 1-5. Shouldn’t I be put into a segment with other resellers? What if I’m a direct user but I only want to receive educational information, as opposed to promotional, I’m more likely to remain an enthusiast and share your information if I only get what I really want?

It’s Easy and Inexpensive To Execute

I’m always surprised when SMB marketers say that using data at this level is only for the big boys. That may have been true in the years past, but today any ESP that’s worth their salt integrates easily with your CRM or E-commerce solutions and web analytics. All you have to do is integrate it and most importantly test it.

- Scott Hardigree | Indiemark

Related Articles from this Author:

• 8 Guiding Principles to Hiring an Email Marketing Expert (marketingtechblog.com)
• You Might Need an Email Marketing Expert If… (marketingtechblog.com)

This post was written by Scott Hardigree

Scott Hardigree is CEO at Indiemark, a full-service email marketing agency and consultancy based in Orlando, FL. Scott can be reach at scott@indiemark.com.

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This morning, I received an email from the folks at ExactTarget that stated that their customer portal had been upgraded to include case management. This isn’t just any little customer portal, though! ExactTarget 3sixty is a fully functioning customer-centric social network that’s integrated with case management, product recommendations, a training library and forums for customers to help one another.

I reached out to ExactTarget today and you could tell their was a buzz in the air! Jeff Rohrs, Mitch Frazier and Stephanie Zircher all sent me some great info along with some already impressive stats. Congrats goes to Stephanie on this launch… she was amazing when I used to work across from her and she deserves the credit along with her team on this amazing enhancement.

• 3sixty now has more than 13,000 members
• Nearly 100 customer-recommended ideas for the product had been made through feedback on 3sixty
• Global product support 24-7 – online via BackOffice + phone support from Client Success

The email service provider space is pretty competitive. It’s very forward-thinking of ExactTarget to concentrate on customer support and customer service. You can send email from any number of email service providers on the Internet… it seems like 1 is popping up every week now. ExactTarget has differentiated itself from most ESPs with the ability to enable customized, dynamic messaging with the most sophisticated and quickest outbound mail management systems in the industry.

Having worked at ExactTarget, I can tell you that it’s one of the most talented and well-led companies in Indianapolis. I have the utmost respect for the team there and enjoyed my time with the company.

This is really a huge differentiator in the marketplace… a company that promotes its ability to service their customer, not simply provide them with a product. I’ve written before that the key to SaaS isn’t simply the platform – but enabling users to leverage the platform.

“3sixty has become the location of choice for email marketers to engage with their peers to discuss current issues in marketing or pose questions to us about the software, its functionality or any issues they are currently experiencing in the application,” said Stephanie Zircher, good friend and ExactTarget’s Director of 3sixty. “The introduction of BackOffice to 3sixty provides the industry’s only one-stop social networking site that provides exclusive client only education, support requests and online collaboration.”

Aside from fantastic functionality, the usability of the product is outstanding as well – with each feature neatly organized in its own panel. It’s a beautiful application:

IMHO , large companies with large volumes of email will not find a better email service provider on the market. There are some great competitors out there, but ExactTarget is a hometown favorite.

Be sure to read the entire Press Release on ExactTarget’s BackOffice.

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