Chris Baggott's Email Marketing Best Practices

Banking And Email

As I’m watching CNBC this morning, they were discussing the problems at Washington Mutual. They haven’t asked for my advice yet but I’m going to offer it up to them, and all banks, anyway.

If there was ever a market that could take better advantage of email, it is banking. Lets look at the attributes:

- They have my money…so I’ve got to pay attention and would opt in

- They are very undifferentiated. Do any of you know the difference between one vs. the other?

- For that reason, they need to develop personal one to one relationships with their clients

- None of us take full advantage of all that our banks have to offer….poor education. (does anyone pick up those brochures at the counter?)

For that matter, does anyone go to the counter? My guess is that the high value clients of most banks have direct deposit and visit the ATM.

My suggestion: Integrate your database to a dynamic-content email system. Target your clients based on actual behavior….and most important….make the emails come from my branch manager and include both a picture and the ability to reply back to that relationship owner.

Washington Mutual made a big deal about being dressed casual in the branch with the expectation that that would make them “appear” closer to the customer. Funny thing, use your database properly and you actually “will” be closer to the customer.

Abuse Trust

There are two ways to alienate your customer when it comes to personal data: Share it or Ignore it.

We all know (or for god’s sake should know) the dangers of sharing personal data. I choose to have a relationship with YOU, not your “partners” so you can make a few extra bucks. If you are doing this kind of abuse, Stop now! Publicly apologize to your customers/subscribers and move on. Trust me your audience will appreciate you all the more.

But that is preaching to the choir I know. The real abuse is practiced by all of us every day. We abuse our customer’s private data….by ignoring it.

The studies and the evidence clearly point to the fact that customers will and DO happily provide personal data to business partners if there is a recognizable benefit to them to do so.

Everyone wants the same basic things. Better service, more relevant communications, opportunities to save time and money. It is really pretty simple. Help your customers achieve that and you capture lifetime relationships.

Invest in your customers. Be relevant. Use Dynamic Content.

Consumers Want Personalized Content!

Guess What?

Consumers Want Personalized Content!

This should come as no surprise to anyone; people don’t like us to waste their time. If you are going to communicate with them, make it relevant. The good news is that if you do this, you will find that they are going to be much more willing to share even more personal data. A new study published by eMarketer backs this up with hard data if you need reinforcement. (read here)

But the logic should speak for itself. Want to tick off a customer? Talk to them like you have never seen them before. Collect personal data and then DON’T use it.

On the other hand, show that you value the relationship by personalizing and driving dynamic content that is relevant and you know what happens….. Loyalty, appreciation, high lifetime value.

Email & Real Estate

Ok, so I'm shopping for real estate. I do the right thing and go online, search for the area that I'm considering and send dozens of emails out to agents.

What do i get back? Maybe 10% actually emailed me once. No one has emailed me more than once. I've signed up for three newsletters that were on real estate sites....no email yet.

One even gave me an error message. This poor sap was spending money on newpaper ads with the sole purpose of driving me to sign up for his email and the thing didn't even work.

The real estate business must be so good that they really don't have to focus on prospects that don't want to get married right away :-)

The fact is, I can think of no application that is more appropriate than Real Estate for effective email communciations. After all, they are looking to build relationships with lots of people, show expertise in an area and build credibility. It is such an incompetitent group that any proactive/professionalism would stand out like a shining beacon!

Do I sound bitter? Nothing is more frustrating than a customer who wants to buy your product and you make it difficult. Think about how you use email and how you can build better relationships no matter what your business.

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Thank You

This has been a very humbling and exciting week for me personally. As you may know, Forrester released their report: The Best Email Marketing Service Providers. (download here)

Thank you to all of the successful customers and employees that made our stellar ranking possible. What really thrills me about this report is that it is such a validation of what we have been talking about for three years. According to their survey of 92 of the top email marketers the following criteria was established as the most important:

“Clients Want Dynamic Content, Ease of Use and Integration” (source: Forrester)

The top 5 criteria are: Price, Technology, Deliverability, Ease of Use and Technology Integration.

Batch and Blast is dead. Tools that enable Marketers to manage their own programs to drive relevant content and build better customer relationships are what business needs.

Sincerely, Thank you to everyone both inside and outside of ExactTarget that made this possible