E-mail

As per my headline, for this issue of Catalog Success: The Corner View, I hand my pen — um, keyboard — over to Catalog Success E-Commerce Insights columnist Alan Rimm-Kaufman. Alan heads the Rimm-Kaufman Group, an online agency providing large-scale paid search bid management and Web site testing services, and was formerly a marketing executive with the Crutchfield catalog of consumer electronics. I leave the stage to Alan, who starts with a potential scenario followed by nine predictions for the future of the catalog/multichannel business as it affects you. Scene: A bar at a conference hotel during a marketing trade show. Bill:

In its recent whitepaper, Mailing With Permission, e-mail software and service provider Lyris Technologies breaks down the various aspects of permission-based marketing, from subscription processes to the expectations you should establish for your customers to privacy regulations. Here are six of the whitepaper’s do’s and don’ts for creating a successful permission-based marketing campaign. 1. Require double opt-in. As the most ethical subscription standard, double opt-in requires prospective members to confirm their memberships before receiving your next mailing, protecting them from receiving mail they didn’t sign up for. And it’s beneficial to marketers as well. Consumers who confirm their subscriptions are most likely to

As e-mail continues to grow as a viable channel for multichannel marketers, its impact on the overall customer experience must continuously be addressed. Just like any other touchpoint the customer has with a company, e-mail creates an experience, says Scott Olrich, chief marketing officer at Responsys. In a recent whitepaper from this on-demand marketing solutions provider entitled “Email Marketing’s New Rules of Engagement: The customer experience moves front and center,” Responsys offers several tips on how to optimize e-mail marketing campaigns, creating a positive experience for customers. Here are some of the whitepaper’s most notable pointers. 1. Have e-mails automated to customer life events.

With the sophistication of Web 2.0 generation e-commerce systems, I’m seeing more and more creative uses of e-mail. I’m thinking about individual, tailored e-mails generated by your e-commerce or order-management system rather than the bulk e-mails sent out as part of marketing campaigns. They’re sometimes called “operational e-mails.”
You never have a better time to cement your relationship with a customer, and generate an additional sale, than when you have a relevant e-mail (or phone call) that results from a customer action. Here are some examples … and some ideas.
* Order confirmation e-mails. Recognize first-time buyers and returning customers, and try a “15-minute

When I attend industry conferences, I do quite a lot of cherry-picking. After all, there’s quite a lot of information spread around, but not a lot of it’s relevant to catalogers and multichannel marketers. So for this week’s edition of The Corner View, I took it upon myself to attend many sessions from the eTail Conference, held Feb. 11-14 in Palm Desert, Calif., and whittle down these experiences into the top 10 ideas, tips, points and company activities I took in during the event. I only attended sessions with panels that included catalog/multichannel marketers. The most noteworthy subjects they discussed included exploring

Many catalogers are missing important data that would allow them to make better use of both direct mail and e-mail to market effectively. Specifically, they don’t have the following: 1. E-mail addresses from many of their customers; consequently, they can’t use multichannel marketing to reach their best targets. They can certainly mail their catalogs, but they’re missing the one-two punch of using direct mail with e-mail. 2. Their e-mail lists often don’t contain name and address information. Therefore they don’t know the portions of their lists that are current or past customers. As a result, they can’t launch special campaigns to their best

Looking to solidify its online channel to complement its 23-year-old catalog and new storefront, modern home furnishings marketer Chiasso targeted e-mail as the answer. “We’re [primarily] a catalog company, so we need to provide a great book to look through,” says Chiasso E-Commerce Manager Brian Mehler. “But you can’t just send a catalog and hope it does everything. You have to provide customers with different portals. So our e-mail and Web site are our portals.” The Chicago-based company wasn’t seeing the results it had hoped for, however. Open rates stood at 15 percent and the clickthrough rate was 5 percent. Conversion rates were

Editor’s Note: This is the first article of a three-part series on becoming more proficient and adapting to the multichannel world. Parts two and three will appear in our June and September issues. Can you imagine a catalog/multichannel company not striving to become more efficient and effective in each selling channel in which it operates? Certainly not. This article focuses on the key issues and trends impacting multichannel selling today. It examines how you can improve your bottom line in each channel, cuts to the chase and identifies seven issues that smart direct sellers need to focus on this year. (You can also

Struggling to convert the sleek, fashionable look of its catalog into its e-mails, Chiasso decided a creative redesign was needed. “We have this great catalog that we put together and mail out, but in the e-mails, images were being cut out,” says E-Commerce Manager Brian Mehler. “There were six images that were cut out and put onto a colorful background with a message, but it was hard for customers to actualize that. They’d see an item in the e-mail with a green background and couldn’t imagine that vase sitting on a shelf in their home.” Along with synchronizing its e-mail campaigns with the

Having a hard time finalizing your 2008 contact strategy? You’re not alone. The mission hasn’t changed: You want to develop the most efficient way to convert prospects into first-time buyers and first-time buyers into repeat customers. But piece together the rapid pace of technological change, the volatile economy, the ongoing migration and evolution from phone to Web ordering, then add the likely distraction of the presidential election throughout the year, and it can make any marketer feel like throwing in the towel in bewilderment. Realistically, there are only three ways to proactively convert known prospects to buyers and one-time buyers to repeat buyers: