Best practices for Transactional emails

What is a transactional email?

Transactional email is the eMail send to a customer to apprise him/her about the status of any transaction. These customer service email communications are sent as a result of shipment notification, order, service requests, password changes or any other biz alerts - better known as transactional e-mail.

Compared with other email to subscribers, transactional e-mail have higher conversion rates - open rate, higher click-through rate. Due to this high open rates, many online strategist emphasis the use of use of service-based email in the marketing mix to tap up-sell opportunities.

Now let's find the use of Transactional email Messages:

• Purchase confirmations
• Shipping notices
• inventory-stock
• Receipts/charge
• Regular statements
• Service request received
• Notifications/Alerts
• Updates
• Cross-sell/Up sell
• Reminders

Here are the best practices for transational emails:

• Send by using an unique IP & domain
• Use sender authentication ( SPF )
• Use recognizable from address
• Quickly send transactional email ( best in less than a minute)
• Use identifiable ('from name and "from address")
• Track email metrics ( opens, click)
• Use riveting subject line( informative & compelling)
• Display transaction details on the upfront
• Give a personal touch to the transactional emails
• Include a request to the user to add email address to their address book ( personal white list)
• Give customer support info
• Design transactional emails based on website navigation exp
• Give more priority to images ( Increases click-through)
• Customized email based on customer info
• Customize cross sell offers
• Anticipate & answer customer questions

By leveraging transactional e-mails, you can generate incremental revenue while reinforcing your brand awareness across the customer base. Your effort to reach more with customer service email communication is the first step of doing more with less.

Now's the time to kindle and dress up the transaction emails to attract more customers and open doors of opportunity for your business.

Rise above the in-box noise
Why don't you make the best use of transactional emails to capture customer's attention and interest? Capitalize on the next big wave in email marketing with fine tunned customer engagement emails.

Need help on transactional email messages?

Contact us for 20 minutes no obligation consultation with our online data specialist. Sign-up now with your details for immediate call-back.

How Competitive Analysis help you understand competition?

How well do you know your competitors?

Running a business is not just about you and your customers. It's important to know how the competitors run their game-plan to attract customers. In the current market scenario, it is important to keep your eyes and ear open on the ever changing marketing strategies in the market space.

You can add the most suitable and effective marketing strategies to your marketing mix by studying the marketing strategies employed by your competitors.

Here are few points for your competitive analysis framework

• Who are your competitors?
• What is the organization size?
• What market share they hold in ebiz?
• What are the markets they target?
• What is the price point of their offer?
• Which lists do you both use?
• Which biz lists work for them and not you?
• How often do your competitors send email campaign?
• When do they mail?
• What is the frequency of their mailing?

Track your biz peers on how they are positioned in the market

• Why clients buy your products/services?
• What extra benefits do you offer?
• What is the price of your offer?
• Who are targeted for your biz proposition?
• How does your marketing mix compare to other competitors?

This short note gives a gist of how you can go on to develop a comprehensive competitive business strategy. If you haven't looked outside your biz, then this last quarter of 2009 will be the right time to imbibe new lessons from your biz competitors.

Turning Data to Insight through Competitive Analysis

Data Check Central has developed database marketing strategies for several European multinational companies and for many companies in the U.S. market.

Our data analysts analyze and documented product/market requirements of our clients and recommend the best-fit data management solutions to meet their business requirement.

Email address Appending -

Data check Central offers unique data append service that will 're-kindle' your existing database marketing program. Through this program you will acquire valid email addresses of your existing customers for very little cost per email-id and in less time.

Definition of Email Append:

Email address appending (Email Append), is a process through which individual's e-mail address is annexed to the missing email fields of the database. This is done by matching your database against a third-party national database. During this automated process, the software will locate similar data field and append permission email address to the matched record.

Data Check Central's data appending sends opt-in email to the matched records before it overlays deliverable email addresses to your existing customer file.

How does data appending process work:

First you need to send us your database in a clean format (no blanks, first and last name in different columns, columns line up, etc). We create a copy and upload your data in our proprietary tool to match it with our master data. During the append process, the software locates similar records and appends relevant details to your file.

ROI from email appending

Our prices for email appending are based on results. We charge only for the records found by our appending process. This price structure suits most of our clients and reduces the cost of the project.

The append percentage varies, project to project. Based on the quality of b2b data, the percentage of good quality records retrieved varies. Most often we are able to provide match rates from 25% to 60%.

How Email appending benefits your business:

1. Reduces b2b communication costs
2. Enhances digital marketing mix
3. Enriches email ties with customers
4. Reduces undeliverable emails
5. Boost email campaign responses

Why Data Check Central for email appending

Our email address appending can replace wrong email address of your customers with fresh email address. With our master database of 120 million business records, we offer superior match rates and cost-effective email appending solutions for your business.

Learn more about Data Check Central's email appending solution through our sample append test program. Contact us today to test this limited offer and learn how we can help you regain digital ties with your customers.

Email List Building - dos and don't

According to a DMA report, email marketing produces ROI of $57.25 for every dollar spent. That's roughly more than 150 percent ROI than any other digital marketing channel. Amazing isn't...

Anyone who's into email marketing knows that email list building is the life-blood of any email marketing project. To achieve continued list growth, every marketer works with a plan in hand. But most often these plans don't turn to numbers because of improper implementation or due to the lack of knowledge.

One best way to drive list growth is by harnessing multiple media channels. Here are the few other dos and don't that will guide in acquiring more users to your database.

Email List acquisition Dos and Don't

1. Keep the opt-in process simple- Don't overwhelm new registrations with too many info
   
   
2. Send "Thank you" message to new users. This lets new users to know that they have successfully joined the group
   
   
3. Include sign-up page at the places in your website which attract more eyeballs
   
   
4. Send Welcome email to new subscribers to include privacy policy
   
   
5. comply with CAN-SPAN requirement
   
   
6. Remove bounced emails from your email database
   
   
7. Ask permission before sending anyone on your list an email
   
   
8. Capitalize up-sell opportunities through transaction emails
   
   
9. Track the source of new subscribers
   
   
10. Focus to build high-quality opt-in subscribers
    
    
11. Explain your privacy policy on the registration page
    
    
12. Utilize all touch points to gather permission user data to your database (point of sale, in-store, call centers, Sign-up form, conference/trade shows, webinar registration, etc.)

Don't

1. Make subscribers to submit all details during registration
   
   
2. Forget to send confirmation mail after immediate sign-up
   
   
3. Use harvested addresses. They are not opt-in.

How clean was my database then!

Not so long back I started database marketing with a squeaky clean database. My biz flourished with impressive revenue from targeted email. Time moved and with it the my customers too moved. Result was high email bounce from email campaign!

“33% of email addresses change annually.”

— Jupiter Research

Too many non-existing or invalid email addresses in the campaign will result in flood of undelivered mails in the campaign. Such hard email bounces will always carry the risk of your IP address or your SMTP server being blocked by ISP's.

Now it has reached a point that my email campaign has turned unproductive and even damaging my reputation. I've forced with two question.

Shall I hit on delete and erase the entire old database

or

Shall I salvage the existing email address & get deliverable email address

Then I hit on the idea to use email change of address(ECOA) process to retrieve email address from the dirty pile.

What's NCOA process?

NCOA process compares the customer's data with the National Change of Address database to find individuals or companies who have moved. The NCOA database contains the recent address of individuals, families or companies that have moved to a new location and those who have filed change of address with the USPS.

NCOA process performs the following vital screening on your email database:

• Identify un-deliverable email addresses- "dead" email ids
  
  
• Identify incorrect and correct obvious errors( typo mistakes, such as jdramse@aool or djane@yaho.com.
  
  
• Locates prank email address, such as asdf@hotmail.com and test@gmail.com.
  
  
• Identify and remove email ids such as abuse@hotmail.com from your mailing list
  
  
• Remove duplicates email address from your database, such as same name entered in different variation( prefix,title case etc)

NCOA process acts like a preventive doze against sweepage of email address in your database. With this process you can reconnect with your customers before your competitors find them.

That's a great way to clean your database and minimize bounces and customer defection. Next time, act early on data cleansing to maintain the sheen of your database. In this way your investment in database marketing is protected and viable revenue is guaranteed!

8 data enhancements to reach best B-2-B prospects

Appending or enhancing business intelligent data to your existing customer records enable you to know more about your customers and translate this information into profitable customer relationship management.

Now let's know more about customers

Does your database include such information as, who are your competitors and their primary source of customers? If not, then you are not alone! Many biz owners are unaware about customer's preferences nor about the competitors strenght and weakness.

For successful marketing, you'll have to spend some time researching about your customers - find their marketing preferences, business traits, business strength, name of decision makers, etc. Assemble all the traits of your customer and make high-priority and low-priority. This detailed list could demographic, firmographic, marketing or geographic data about your customers.

Features and Benefits of DCC's data appending

Data Check Central's data enhancement service enable our clients to leverage valuable data input and later help you build a better relationship with their customers.

• Communicate with preferred channels of communication
• Increase lead quality through personalized offers
• Segment marketing campaigns
• Personalize your message for better response
• Raise more $$$

How Data Check Central acquires quality data:

We team with leading data suppliers, business communities, trade shows, conference, accredited trade bodies, biz directories; business white page directories, annual reports, Govt records, State records, etc.

Data enhancement details

• Contact Name
  
• Biz title
• Contact details
• Industry
• Employee Size
• Sales Volume
• NAICS
  
• Area Code
• and more...

Our data Append process - Expected results

In data appending there is no single formula. We review each request on data management and data appending, case by case.

Our data append process deliver from 40 – 60 percent of new data to our clients, but this figure can go up or come down, depending on the quality of data (type of industry, business requirement). However, before we start your work, our experts will access the data and report the probable data append figures for the project.

Moreover we review your data by using NCOA updates from the U.S.P.S. Our quality measures help our marketing and sales team to intensity target marketing opportunities.

How you gain from data appending

• Gain more sales opportunities
  
• Enhance the value of customer file
• Reduce the cost of communication
• Increase response from direct marketing

Data Check Central's data appending solution will add value to your current customer file. With more valuable data about your customers, you can get better results from CRM solutions. Moreover, our solution integrates with all the leading CRM application like salesforce.com, sugarCRM, etc.

Our master business database has over 120 million records. This pool of verified business data enable our data append process to locate similar data matches.

Submit your contact request in the online form, and get fresh details about your customer.

Enhance biz marketing with reverse email append

Do you have a list of email address in your database, but don't have full name & postal information? In this scenario how to quickly get offline contact information from email address?

In this case, you could use Reverse Email Append service.

Through reverse append services you can find full name, postal address of your customers on the basis of email address.

While Email appending process adds email address to the existing customer records, reverse email append process unearths postal address of client based on online information. Reverse appending process enable marketers to acquire offline channels to send direct mailers, brochures, catalogs and postcards.

Adding offline communication touch-points into your customer data fine will add more opportunities for your to reach prospects through their preferred marketing medium.

Data Check Central's Reverse Email Append service

DCC's premier reverse email appending solution will find your customers off-line postal address associated with the email-address. This unique process is done by matching our large business to business database with your in-house customer file. Through an automated matching process, the matching records are appended to your file and returned back to you.

Our b-to-b database has more than 110 million permission records. We clean the records in our database through monthly data validation process and cleansing process. The database is derived from multiple sources; network partners, Govt records, biz news, research papers, survey responses and permission-based websites.

Our reverse Email Append rate ranges from 35% - 65%.

Our proprietary Reverse Append process makes use of latest data filtering process. We do manual verification to get better match rates from our reverse appending.

Reverse appending improves the efficiency of your marketing campaign and utilize multi-channel marketing strategies.

Reverse appending maximizes the value of your online customer records by adding :

• Name
• Postal Address - CASS Standardized
• Phone Number
• Business Name
• SIC Code
• And more…

Best of all, there is no lag time in Data Check Central's reverse email append process. In a short turn-around time, you will add value to your prospect's record with relevant postal file enhancement.

Until next time.

Clive