5 Dos for Targeted Email Marketing

I'm tired of Spam. I, like millions of you, get spammed the hell out off and if it weren't for the awesomeness of spam filters I would not use emails. So keeping on the topic of Spamming I decided to write this to inform companies, organization or person who want to communicate to the rest of the world about their products, services, blogs or websites.

Here are my 5 Do’s for Targeted Email Marketing.

Here's a scenario. John is an Educationalist and very often visits an online books store, for ease sake we'll call it Onlinebooks (no ref to the already existing webpage), to view the latest newest books that have released under his Category of interest “Education”.


1) Ask permission: It is very very important to have users permission to talk to them or update them on any new news, products or services that you may have. This can be done either:

1. At the time of Sign up. Where users have the option to choose if they want to be communicated too or not.
2. At the time of Purchase. This is when users proceeds to checkout ask them if they would like to contacted the next time a new product release is available. In the case of the above scenario, Onlinebooks would ask John if he would like to receive alerts when a new book is added to the education category or a new book has released from the same author whose book he purchased.

This will ensure that Onlinebooks has John's permission to talk to him. In addition, always ensure that users have the ability to stop receiving communication from you cause if they start flagging you as spam then your email addresses get blacklisted which could be bad.

2) Collect information of interest from your customer: Here it’s important to understand what product or service, you offer, interests you customer.

1. At the time of registration ask your users for their interest.

2. During the checkout process ensure track all purchases. This information can then be used to understand customer’s interest. In this case the website may need store cookies on the user’s machine. Ensure that this is disclosed to the user.

With this step Onlinebooks will ensure that John constantly receives only relevant information.


3) Analyze time return purchases of customer: This means track to see how often your customers comes back to purchase from you again. Example John, on an average, takes a month to complete a book.
This would ensure that on at the every month relevant communication is sent to John on the topics you've identified that may interest him.

4) Profile you customers: "Nice to put a face to a name" is commonly is used when meeting some after having many non-personal meetings. In the online world the chances of that happening are slim. Hence you would need to profile your users. This is why many companies today have a profile section for users to fill and update.
Applying the above scenario this would be very important information for Onlinebooks because John's wife's just delivered a baby boy. Now John's a father and would obviously like to read up on fatherhood. Onlinebook can then use this information to start selling baby books to John in addition to his regular education books. Hence creating another stream of revenue. Off course you may need to keep reminding your customers to update their profile.

5) Constant periodic communication: Don't bombard your customer with information every day and at the same time don’t not communicate with your customer for a long time. Ensure there is a period when communication is sent like once every 15days, once a month etc. Going a step ahead and letting your customers choose the time frame for communication will be a huge positive. However don't forget to include all the new releases or updates in this communication between the last communication and new one.

I hope this has been helpful. Please feel free to speak your mind on the comments section.