Choosing the right customer for Direct Marketing/Email Marketing Campaign

Source: Marketing Transformation

The role of a Marketing Manager in an organization has changed greatly over the last few years. The market continues to change rapidly with an increased number of products and increased competition and with direct marketing focus now shifting to customer engagement. Customers are aware more than ever before of what they want and are spoilt for choice. The channels for direct marketing are also changing rapidly. Gone are the days when a billboard or an ad on television was a way to reach the customer.

Today’s marketers need to nurture and engage their customers and prospects - not just a random selection of people but a carefully chosen target group. This choice requires a clear profiling of the target audience for a marketing campaign management based on an in-depth analysis of customer behavior and preferences. The Marketing Manager needs to be a friend who knows the customer so well as to be able to suggest what she or he needs and make the customer say – “Wow…you know what? That’s exactly what I need at this moment! It’s perfect for me!”

While it’s all very one-to-one, personal and exciting, this throws up a great challenge for a Marketing Manager. The questions that pop up in the Marketing Manager’s mind are:

1. Where do I get this in-depth information on my customers/prospects?
2. How do I choose the correct target set for my campaign?
3. How can I do all this quickly and easily?

Add to it the limitations of the processes and current database systems that store the wealth of customer information in an organization, such as:

1. Complexity of list pulling for Email Marketing Campaign
2. Dependency on a Database Analyst
3. No flexibility and Time consuming
4. No tracking of previous campaigns
5. Complicated and not easy

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Sending Email at Right Time

One of the most important aspect of email marketing as part of the Direct Marketing Campaign is scheduling of the email delivery. The following are my experience

1. Never send an email on weekend, your email will be part of hundreds of emails that the user receive. Its most likely the user will preferred to read the emails that looks like important from subject line.

2. Never send an email on Monday. The user will already be busy for planning the week ahead so chances of ignoring the email is high.

3. Never send an email at overnight as the user will read the email at morning with others so the point 1 becomes applicable.

4. Send an email sometime mid of the week around 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm. As the user is most probably on desk and have already replied to the necessary and important emails. Also the new email popups will ensure the user pays attention to the email.

These are some of tips that I have successfully followed to achieved sometime Open Rate 20-30% as part of my campaign management activity.

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