I bought myself a present a couple of weeks ago via an email marketing offer. I am now the proud owner of a 3-terrabite, USB-3 (yes, I’m a bit of a nerd), external hard-drive complete with back-up software. It is not the most exciting item, but I am happy with it. The product had 5-star reviews and, from my, albeit limited, experience, it seems to be worthy of them.
My method of buying has been proved over the years. I go onto a website of a company to whose email marketing list I subscribe and find an item that I want to buy at a price that is ball-park. I then click on links to the specification, check out any options and anything else that I might want to go with it, ensure I’ve spent some time on the page and then put it on a watched list. I go back to the page another couple of times over the next three or four days and then wait.
The norm is that I will receive some kind of offer on the item I watched, or one similar, within a week. It is then a case of comparing prices with other outlets and coming to a decision to buy or not.
What might, but really should not, come as a surprise is that despite the price in the marketing email of the item I watched being a little higher than I could get elsewhere, I opted to buy it. This might seem to go against what many people think of as the norm for customers.
The reasons I went for the dearer option is down to experience with the company. I have used them a number of times before and have been pleased with their performance. Their returns policy is quick, and more importantly, easy to complete. I once misunderstood what came with one item I purchased and phoned their help-desk for clarification. My error was explained, we both apologised, and I was sent a little piece of software to overcome my problem.
There was no charge for this despite the fact that if I had bought it with the original item I would have had to pay a little more. With compliments for my previous custom, the woman said.
No wonder I have stayed on their email marketing list for over seven years with such excellent customer relationship marketing (CRM).
This is a big subject of course and impossible to condense into a few hundred words, but the point for us is that email marketing software allows us to use it to the full. In fact it makes it easy. We can be personal because we have the data to do so.
CRM gives significant advantages in email marketing, lowering the unsubscribe rate being probably the most significant. Whilst research disagrees as to the specifics, if you keep just 5% more customers the minimum profit increase is put at 29%. That has got to be good.
On top of that you will not have to cut your profit margin to the bone. I paid a little more than 1.5% extra for my external hard drive. I think it was a bargain.
