• by Neil Rosen , February 4, 2014

Email marketing is at the core of developing a power brand, a compilation of impressions, experiences, and concepts that work together to create a position in the mind and sentiment of consumers. Power brands are created through a number of initiatives: planned media, press coverage, key-influencer usage and endorsements, word-of-mouth, reputation, and consistent delivery on the brand promise.

1: Build a stronger database. Building a stronger database is at the heart of customer-acquisition strategy and initiatives. Your customer-acquisition solution has to bring in quality leads on a consistent basis to both safeguard your brand reputation (thus maintaining your power position) and deliver the ROI you expect.

The only way to ensure that both of those requirements are met is to qualify every lead. Marketers know the equation: the more qualified a prospect, the more likely the prospect is to become a customer, and the higher the revenue from that customer will be.

#2: Customer lifetime value: nurturing email cascades. As new prospects and customers are acquired, place them into a strategically designed transition program typically lasting two to four weeks, with technology enabling the program to be easily implemented and executed and tracking ROI results to the source.

Using an email solution that moves a new customer smoothly through transition marketing, from welcome emails to engagement emails, is a solution that will build good CRM and lifetime value. In fact, marketers using new-subscriber smart cascades see response rates of:

• Six to 10 times that of their standard campaigns.
• Conversions of prospects to customers that increase as much as 25% when these prospects are sent new-subscriber cascades.

In addition, simple tools such as shares, likes, and F2F, when put in the hands of your brand’s most enthusiastic customers, can drive dramatic growth — and at low or no cost.

#3: Customer lifetime value: transactional emails. Transactional email is email that is, essentially, housekeeping: it’s email that confirms or informs. It may be a response to an action that someone took directly (an online purchase, for example, will generate a receipt), or it may be a response to an action that the recipient is the target of (comments made in response to a social media post generate emails to alert the poster of the response).

Beyond reading the subject line, people tend to skim the contentof transactional emails. So the subject line needs to be both clear and engaging. And the content of transactional emails — both in terms of design and copy — needs to be every bit as creatively crafted as are your other emails to customers.

Transactional emails can be marketing emails as well, as long as the marketing message is subtle and noninvasive. They can be used to build relationships, encourage future sales, and provide a connection between your brand and your customers.

The marketing needs to flow from the transaction and not make it seem as through two separate emails have been cobbled together. Coupons, links to download an app, tips about using your company’s services or products, notices about upcoming sales, and ideas along the lines of Amazon’s “other customers who bought this product also bought…” are all great marketing opportunities within transactional emails.

#4: Customer lifetime value: triggered emails. Triggered emails are emails that are sent in direct response to a customer’s actions; they can be either transactional or marketing in nature. The good news is that they perform better than standard emails (by 10 times or more). Because triggered emails allow you to take action in real time, you are instantly interacting with customers immediately after they connect with your brand.

Emails can be triggered by an almost infinite set of prospect or customer actions, some of which may include:

a.     Website page-level triggered emails perform 10-20 times better than standard emails and are critical to driving revenue, because only about 5% of your subscribers go to your shopping cart when visiting your website.

b.    Shopping cart-triggered emails optimize the performance of the 5% of customer who do get to the shopping cart pages and deliver 20-40 times the CPM of standard emails.

c.     Social interaction-triggered emails drive 10-20 times the revenue of standard emails, extending customers’ lifetime engagement by 50% and more.

d.    Email-activity triggers are the best way to drive relevant content to active email subscribers in real time, responding to actions they take (either in a single campaign or as part of an email cascade), and letting that activity drive the content they receive going forward.

With over 3.3 billion email accounts worldwide, and more than a hundred trillion messages sent every year, email marketing continues to be the most effective marketing tool available. As it continues to grow as a marketing channel. it can also help develop your company or brand into a power player in your vertical.