Are you tired of talk of the tough economy? As our new leadership says, it’s going to get tougher before it gets better. So now is actually the time to “think outside the box” or at least think beyond what you normally do when it comes to getting your message out to your customers and prospects. There are a few easy things you can do with your list and messaging today to “push” people along the purchase cycle. And just because you just might not be thinking about it now, don’t worry - you’ve got a million things to do to run your business. Besides, it’s my job to put ideas in front of you to help you market better!
Step One: Segment Your Lists
When you upload your list to send an email marketing campaign, why not break it up into Best Customers, those can be customers who previously purchased over a certain amount, or purchased a certain number of times; One Time Purchasers, those customers who bought from you only once; and Prospects, people who have never purchased from you but they’ve agreed to get emails from you.
Step Two: Your Messaging
Now that your list is broken into three parts you can easily message and track them separately to see what’s working and what isn’t.
Best Customers: Send your best customers an email with a discount on the product or service they’ve purchased in the past or a complementary product or service and call it your “frequent buyer program”. Give them a special deal for being a long time customer to make them feel special AND to get your name in front of them again. Continue to treat them special and they’ll continue to come back for more.
One Time Purchasers: Send an email to your customers who’ve purchased from you only one time enticing them to buy a product which might be a nice add-on or a sweet deal on a product they’ve purchased before. Give them encouragement to get into your “frequent buyer program” where they’re sure to get continued discounts and deals.
Prospects: Send an email to those prospects that have not purchased a very low price deal or a free trial to get them in the door. Let them know it is an “introductory” or “one time” offer so they don’t come to expect it, but hopefully once they receive your product or service, their experience will be so good that they’ll need to come back for more. Then you can move them into the One Time Purchaser list.
Now track these lists separately to see how they’re doing. The idea is to keep each of these groups going down the path of being a member of your successful frequent buyer program.
I'd like to do segmented lists but finding it difficult. I have a continually refreshed mailing list with about 3000 prospects. Some of those have since become customers, which are stored in a separate list. What's the easiest way to de-duplicate the prospect mailing list to remove the ones that are now on the customer list?
Posted by: Julian | February 13, 2009 at 02:13 AM
Segmentation is a great thing! Thanks for suggesting it. It would be great if VR would offer list segmentation permitting recipients to unsubscribe from certain campaigns/segments but not from the entire account.
Posted by: Josh White | February 11, 2009 at 02:03 PM
Hooray for VR beefing up their campaign reports. Hopefully the list management capabilities are next. I agree with David--it would be extremely helpful if VR could track list member data like how many lists the person is on, last open, last click, send date, etc. This would help me see patterns in our list members' actions, eg: Joe never opens our email or Sally always does. And say I have someone on multiple lists, when they tell me they changed their email address, I currently have to update each one manually--it would be great to only have to do that once. Other email marketing services offer features like this but VR's other features & pricing still beats their competition!
Posted by: Amanda Murphy | February 10, 2009 at 02:09 PM
These are very good ideas. Thank you for sharing. This gives me something to think about and do.
Posted by: David | February 10, 2009 at 01:54 PM
It would be great if VR could help track the last purchase date (and last open, last click, last send dates) of list members, and number of purchases as well. I know it could only get campaign-related data, but that is better than having to segment lists based on data that is in a separate system entirely. How do I get my RFM data into my VR account, and how do I keep it updated?
Posted by: David Wilding | February 10, 2009 at 09:24 AM