Ask for Customer Contact Preferences

Rise above the e-mail marketing din by asking your opt-in customers how often they want to be contacted by you with special offers, suggested Lloyd Merriam, president of CoLinear Systems, a catalog order management system, during his talk, "Smart Systems for Best Order Mangement Practices," at the eCSForum in Philadelphia in March.

When customers are opting in to get your e-mailed communications, ask them to designate how many contacts from you they want to receive. Give options such as:

[ ] Send me offers by e-mail whenever they're available.

[ ] Send me offers up to 6x a year

[ ] Up to 3x a year

[ ] Up to 2x a year

[ ] 1x a year

[ ] Don't send me any offers.

The upshot to this system, said Merriam, is that you may get more contact opportunities than you initially thought you would get, and your customers will be happy that you gave them choices.