Find E-mail Marketing Tools That Work for Catalogers

By Joe Dysart

While the sophistication of high-end e-mail marketing tools can be a bit daunting, virtually any cataloger can find an e-mail marketing package that will increase sales without breaking the bank.

“Although it is often taken for granted, the power of e-mail derives from its ubiquity,” says David Hallerman, a senior analyst at market research firm eMarketer and author of “E-Mail and Word-of-Mouth: Connecting With Your Best Customers.”

He notes that about 90 percent of U.S. Internet users are regular e-mail users, “clearly an audience that has attained critical mass. Although spam makes it harder to reach customers’ inboxes, e-mail’s personal impact is unmatched by more ballyhooed interactive marketing vehicles.”

In fact, a Forrester report released in May 2006 showed that 83 percent of marketers surveyed now consider e-mail to be one of their core marketing tools.

Powerful Packages

Get serious about e-mail marketing. If you’re on the hunt for the best e-mail software for your needs, you’ll find a number of fairly powerful packages, ranging from $1,000 to $50,000. Generally, these packages offer the ability to personalize each e-mail you send with a customer’s name, and add scores of other personal data into each e-mail by mining the data fields in your customer database.

Plus, the programs effortlessly manage list maintenance chores, such as activating new subscriptions, handling mailing list unsubscribes and tracking bounces.

Some programs also offer valuable reports that enable you to track how many subscribers on your mailing list actually open your marketing e-mails, how many click on the links in those e-mails linking back to products on your Web site, and how many of those e-mails are forwarded on to friends and colleagues as word-of-mouth referrals (possibly the most precious of promotions your e-mails can trigger).

ELegalSupply, an online cataloger of office supplies for the legal community, uses a package from the entry-level category: Campaign Enterprise from Arial Software ($985, www.arialsoftware.com). Partner John Enyart says Campaign Enterprise’s ability to personalize e-mails was one of the primary reasons the company chose the software.

“We’re not a mass mailing company to a bulk audience,” he says. “We have a very specific audience, and we want every one of them using us. We know what they do for a living, so our targeted e-mails make sense to them.”

ELegal also uses the software to segment its marketing e-mails according to customer purchase habits. For example, some marketing e-mails target new customers only, while others focus on returning customers. Still others pitch customers who’ve been receiving e-mails from the company for awhile, but have yet to make purchases.

“The e-mails are superior to our previous ones,” Enyart says. “We’re getting people buying from us now who haven’t bought anything from us in years.”

Other packages worth considering in this category include the following:
• Broadcast from Mailworkz ($299 - $1,495, www.mailworkz.com);
• EXP Elite e-mail marketing software from Cyber Samurai Software ($249, www.extractorpro.com);
• GroupMail from Infacta Ltd. ($299, www.infacta.com); and
• EmailUnlimited from 4OfficeAutomation ($29.95/month, www.4officeautomation.com).

Higher-end, Higher Volume

If you’ve been engaged in e-mail marketing for awhile and are looking to step up to a more sophisticated e-mail marketing solution, packages in this space probably will be more to your liking.

Higher-end solutions generally do a better job of managing incoming e-mail from customers. Many of these packages enable you to vary content based on a customer’s location, age group, previous purchases, special interests or any other combination of variables you consider important.

A key player in the high-end solution space is KANA (www.kana.com), which is used by office products giant Staples, among other marketers. “Our administrators saw the ability to leverage the solution’s rules logic to optimize the timeliness of responses to customers — such as the ability to segregate requests by type,” says Randy Scollins, director of strategy and implementation at Staples. “KANA is reasonably priced and well-supported. It has the scalability to keep up with our growth in e-mail volume.”

Other high-end solutions worth a look include these:
• IMPACT from Acxiom Digital (www.acxiomdigital.com) and
• CampaignerPro from GOT Corp. (www.gotmarketing.com).

Live Chat E-mail

While there are any number of bells and whistles you can add to a basic e-mail marketing campaign, one of the more innovative is live chat. Already found on a number of catalogers’ Web sites, live chatboxes are popping up in cataloger e-mails because they create a sense of immediacy few other forms of Web marketing can rival.

One of the leading service providers of live chat services is LivePerson (www.liveperson.com), which can configure any e-mail marketing messages to include a live chat link or dialogue box.

So far, one of LivePerson’s most successful users is online cataloger Backcountry.com, which increased its prospect-to-sale ratio tenfold, and boosted its average order value by 54 percent after using LivePerson’s chatrooms, according to Kevin Kohn, executive vice president of marketing at LivePerson.

Other solutions worth considering in this category include:
• InstantService.com from InstantService (www.instantservice.com);
• Live2Support.com from Live2Support (www.live2support.com); and
• MayWeHelp.com (www.maywehelp.com).

Keep it Legal

A necessary investment for any cataloger’s e-mail campaign is one that ensures the e-mails you send are on the right side of federal spam laws.

A study on the legal fine print is available in Marketing Sherpa’s CAN-SPAM Guidance: Q&A with the FTC + Official Recommendations Report for Emailers ($99, www.sherpastore.com/canspam-recommendations.html). Essentially, the guide offers marketers detailed advice based on a Marketing Sherpa interview with FTC Attorney Michael Goodman, as well as input from four e-mail marketing industry experts.

With e-mail now as commonplace a means of communication among consumers and businesses as the telephone, multichannel marketers’ challenge is to guide their customers through its continuous technological advancements. Its potential still is developing, however, and marketers who keep on top of the changes will be in the best shape to make the most of it in the future.

Specialized Tools

Besides relying on e-mail marketing suites, you’ll also find the following tools handy for specialized e-mail marketing needs:

• Spam guard pre-testing: Several free services on the Web will scour your e-mail for common “trigger” words and phrases that automatically send a message to the spam bin. Those offering such services include Delivery Watch (www.deliverywatch.com) and SiteSell.com (www.spamcheck.sitesell.com).

• Self-destructing e-mail: These e-mail services are perfect for marketers who want to offer coupon specials via e-mail, but also want to ensure those coupons “disappear” from inboxes once the coupon expires. Service providers in this space include Kablooey Mail (www.kablooeymail.com), SpiffyNet Solutions (www.destructingmessage.com); BigString ($2.50/month unlimited messaging, www.bigstring.com), and VaporStream ($39.99/year plus $5 setup and $5/yearly additional for mobile phone messages, www.vaporstream.com).

• E-mail eye-tracking analysis: Tracking the eye movements of subjects reading marketing e-mails helps identify what works in an e-mail and what doesn’t. EyeTracking Inc. (www.eyetracking.com) specializes in it. Other service providers include M/A/R/C Research (www.marcresearch.com) and Nielsen Norman Group (www.nngroup.com).

E-mail Vendors

• 4OfficeAutomation, EmailUnlimited, e-mail marketing software (www.4officeautomation.com)
• Acxiom Digital, IMPACT, e-mail marketing software (www.acxiomdigital.com)
• Arial Software, Campaign Enterprise, e-mail marketing software (www.arialsoftware.com)
• BigString, self-destructing e-mail (www.bigstring.com)
• Cyber Samurai Software, EXP Elite e-mail marketing software (www.extractorpro.com)
• Delivery Watch, spam filter tester, spam guard pre-testing (www.deliverywatch.com)
• EyeTracking Inc., e-mail eyetracking analysis (www.eyetracking.com)
• GOT Corp., Campaigner Pro, e-mail marketing software (www.campaigner.com)
• Infacta Ltd., GroupMail, e-mail marketing software (www.infacta.com)
• InstantService, InstantService.com, live chat software (www.instantservice.com)
• Kablooey Mail, self-destructing e-mail (www.kablooeymail.com)
• KANA, KANA Response, e-mail marketing software (www.kana.com)
• Live2Support, Live2Support.com, live chat software (www.live2support.com)
• LivePerson, Timpani Contact Center, live person/live chat software (www.liveperson.com)
• Mailworkz, Broadcast, e-mail marketing software (www.mailworkz.com)
• M/A/R/C Research, e-mail eyetracking analysis (www.marcresearch.com)
• Marketing Sherpa, CAN-SPAM Guidance: Q&A with the FTC + Official Recommendations Report for Emailers Spam Compliance Guide (www.sherpastore.com/canspam-recommendations.html)
• MayWeHelp.com, live chat software (www.maywehelp.com)
• Nielsen Norman Group, e-mail eyetracking analysis (www.nngroup.com)
• SiteSell.com, SpamCheck, free spam check, spam guard pre-testing (spamcheck.sitesell.com)
• SpiffyNet Solutions, DestructingMessage.com, self-destructing e-mail (www.destructingmessage.com)
• VaporStream, Stream Messaging, self-destructing e-mail (www.vaporstream.com)