Hi there,

In a previous post we took a brief look at implementing a welcome programme as part of your automated campaign. We also highlighted the importance of understanding your customer sales lifecycle. At this point you will be in a position to start developing different campaign content. This can be based on a trigger you employ (e.g. time-based or an action carried out by the recipient etc.), or according to a pre-defined point in your own cycle (e.g. no activity by customer segment x after y months produces z follow-up).

In the next couple of blogs we will look at some tips and tricks you can use to improve the content of your automated campaign.

1. Re-engagement

"Did you know that, on average, about 70-75% of your email list is inactive?"

This statistic highlights again the importance of implementing measures to either re-engage customers with potential, or remove those that are adding cost to your campaigns. The following are a few steps that you could take:

• Segment your list by those who have not clicked after a specified period of time - e.g. 6/9/12 months. This follow-up mail should ask the recipient whether they are still interested in receiving the content and offer them the opportunity to take action. If this doesn't prompt a response, then remove them from the list.
• There are a number of campaign types that can be developed to encourage re-engagement. For example, those that haven't clicked for a while could be sent a reminder on their birthday, or sent a random survey looking for feedback. Of course it is also a good idea to send a recent special offer that they may not have seen to get their attention.
• Cleanse your list! If you still have inactive addresses then you have no need to keep them on the list. However bear in mind you may get some organisational resistance. Some managers like the big headline numbers, such as "we send out 10,000 email marketing messages per month", with a conversion rate of 5%, when reducing that list by half may still produce the same conversion rate but with less cost. Quality is more important than quantity!
• Keep reviewing the on-boarding process and your welcome programme. Ensure there is strong messaging and communication over the first period of your customer/sales cycle. This is the best way of avoiding having to implement a re-engagement campaign at a later point.

In another post we will look at an example of a mail that targets a specific part of the customer sales cycle after sign-up.

David