E-mail Marketing Ideas

Speakers at The Direct Marketing Association's recent Catalog-on-the-Road conference offered some helpful hints for those engaged in e-mail marketing communications with their current customers:

1. Send order confirmations in html format, advises George Kiebala, vice president of sales, Experian Marketing Services. Most e-mailed order confirmations are in text-only format. But because more people are gaining access to html files, try sending customers pictures of the products they ordered — along with any appropriate cross-sell items — in your order confirmations. Caveat: Not everyone can access html, so periodically poll your customer base to determine availability.

2. Compel call center reps to gather more opt-in e-mail addresses. Cynthia Marshall, vice president of marketing at Ross-Simons, held a contest that rewarded the catalog's call center reps who captured the most amount of customer e-mail addresses during the ordering process.

3. Send solo product e-mail offers, similar to postcard direct mailers for individual products. But be sure to change the product often, advises Bill LaPierre, vice president of catalog list brokerage at Millard Group. "If you keep sending the same message and offer," he notes, "people will stop opening your e-mails."

--Donna Loyle