Today's Marketing Challenge: How do I get the most from email marketing?

We talk to financial marketers from all over the country, every day. During our chats, we hear what's bugging you. This week, we'll address some of the more common issues we're hearing.

You're not alone!

Today's Marketing Challenge: How do I get the most from email marketing?

With marketing budgets getting tighter and younger demographics demanding an immediate response while constantly on the go, email marketing is quickly becoming one of the most sought after and frustrating marketing tools. Can it segment? How do I know it's effective? I only have email addresses for 10% of my customer-base. Sound familiar?

The solution? Diligence!

Successful email marketing begins with identifying the right email partner, but the true success is in your diligence:

• Select a system that can accommodate a variety of data fields and multiple audience lists. Use your core system, MCIF or imported email fields to segment and create individual audience lists for specific campaigns.
• Focus your message on value-added tips, but link to relevant products on your website. For example, "You can better manage your budget by using debit cards and online banking to track every dollar spent each month." Then link to your checking account or online banking page(s). If you start the hard-core selling on email, your customers will opt-out and you can no longer email to them.
• Diligently track, track, track. Most email responses will come in the first 3 days, but keep tracking for at least 1 week. Track who opens the email and what they clicked through to. Use the list of customers who clicked through to Online Banking, for example, for outbound sales calls to those folks to see if they had any questions when they clicked to your online banking page. You can provide your CSRs/MSRs with very targeted outbound lists of customers who have shown an interest in a product.
• Diligently track, track, track (part 2). Record the topics of each email you send with the percent of opens, percent of click-throughs and percent of opt-outs to gauge what topics are important to your market.
• Push hard to get your staff to diligently ask about email addresses at EVERY transaction - in the teller line, at the drive-thru, in the call center, heck - even in collections. If they talk to a customer, they should ask, "Can I please have an updated email address?"

Email marketing is a powerful, robust, trackable, cost-effective tool and it beats waiting two weeks for a mailing to print and mail.

Take care,

Eric