Much of the information that your email marketing software needs to be effective is logical and rather obvious. For instance, the database will naturally contain the full purchasing history of all your clients on your various lists. If you are selling printers then you will be able to work out the average time between purchase and when they are more likely to be considering buying ink refills. An offer of four-for-three sent at just the right time is what email marketing is all about.
You will also be able to discover the natural lifecycle of your customers and be able to intervene at a critical time to ensure that enthusiasm for your particular products does not wane. Whilst this is a simplistic overview of the way you can use your database, it does highlight one particular problem.
If it is so simple, then won’t everyone do it the same way? That would mean no advantage to your company.
In competitive times, and when have they not been so, it is vital to have an edge, that little bit extra to ensure that you are up amongst the leaders. One way to ensure this is to optimise your database.
Let us stick with the printer supplier trying to sell inks as the example can highlight situations that are common to both large and small volumes. If you fail to use the full potential of the database you can waste lots of opportunities.
If you total the gap between the purchase of a printer and the request for replacement ink cartridges for all those on your list and then divide by the number of customers you will get what most of us call an average, although some will smugly mention mean. You could then send an offer for replacement inks two weeks before the end time. This is simple and rather basic.
Unfortunately, a mean is accurate for only a few, ball-park for most of the remainder and way out for some. You will no doubt be pleased to know that precision is easy without having to look up the definitions of median and mode.
Divide your customers by type. For instance, the database in your email marketing software will be able to tell you if companies buying a number of printers need ink sooner or later than those buying just the one. One might assume that different printers would have different gaps to when they needed ink. But do not assume, find out.
Discover if the size of the company is critical and use this to differentiate your offers. Three-for-two might give you better profits from smaller companies than your class of the field bulk purchasing reductions which bigger companies appear to appreciate.
The strength of email marketing software is in the accuracy of the detail you can obtain. And it comes with little effort. With more details you have the ability to discriminate. This will be your edge. You can rise above the average, in more ways than one, and target your offers.
