The email medium has for too long been viewed as a cheap and ‘easy’ way of marketing to customers. It is this attitude however, that has led to the prevalent SPAM label associated with email messaging. For the consumer, there is a fine line between SPAM and a relevant email communication. And yet research has shown that customer emails are a key tool for engaging with customers and is highly effective at driving consumers to purchase goods online.

Establishing some sort of relationship with the consumer is the key to relevance. Marketers need to move away from an email ‘broadcast’ mentality and towards truly personalised email messaging to achieve this. Using customer data to create highly relevant content is becoming vital to building a relationship. It is only when this is achieved that email marketers can say they are truly implementing an e-CRM strategy and begin to reap all its benefits.

With the advent of digital print, variable insertion and numerous software applications, personalisation has long been prevalent for the creation of direct mail. There are several techniques associated with email personalisation which are being used by major brands – an estimated 11 per cent of the email market.

Dynamic content – using tailored messages to make the content of the email more relevant – is one core method for personalisation. It enables marketers to personalise communications based upon information known about the customer such as gender, demographics, preferences, purchase information etc. Each recipient can receive an entirely different set of incentives to the next.

If your customer has shared their preferences with you, you need to ensure you use them to communicate relevant and timely messages. This should be the basis for any email message which seeks to take the communication one step further from opening of the email, to reading and engaging with the subject matter.

The provision of variable content based on preference is just one method that can be used, among many, to achieve this. For example, companies such as Orange and Boots have successfully included options to customise emails so that the individual can receive information on subjects they are interested in; in the case of Orange, this includes music, sport, technology, film and games.

The ability to instantly interact with customers and gain further insight into habits and preferences is an immediate benefit therefore of the email medium. In addition to the options to customise emails, another method used to interact with customers is a voting poll facility. Not only does the action of voting show that the individual is engaging with the communication, but it also provides further data on preference which can be used to present offers and communications that are more relevant – optimising on the e-CRM capabilities.

A word of warning to all marketers out there; engaging with the customer in this manner means that you need to deliver on the data they provide. Much attention has been focussed at this in relation to opt-in preferences, and the same principal should apply to all data capture techniques. If you are going to ask the customer to provide preference information and do not deliver on it, it is worse then not asking them at all. Failure to provide the expected level of service that you have created through engagement could lead to serious brand damage and possibly even revenue loss.

Email personalisation can also be introduced to the message subject line. Simple tailoring here can make a great deal of difference to whether the email is opened or not, as the subject line helps to determine the relevance of the communication to the individual. The travel industry have a perfect opportunity to include for example, the names of nearest airports in subject line content to make offers more relevant. Mobile telecoms providers offering event information such as local cinema times or gigs could include the names of upcoming events/gig/films in their subject line. This technique, however, may not be relevant for all organisations and will depend on industry and type of business.

Once the content of your emails are made as relevant as possible to develop the relationship with the individual, the next point to consider is the optimum time for delivery of the message. As there is no set time which is right for everyone, intelligent time sending eliminates the need for set time and day broadcasts. The technology exists which allows emails to be sent out over a week and tracks when your customers open their email. This practice can only be applied to regular communications, such as newsletters, as the technology tracks the individuals opening behaviour over time. The information is then fed back to the database and can be applied to future email messages of this nature.

So if all this can be achieved with customer relationship management, the same can also be applied to developing relationships with prospects. As data lies at the heart of e-CRM, the same principal should apply to e-PRM. Building a marketing database to support and inform email messages to prospects is vital to a successful e-PRM strategy. The data for all individuals for example who have registered on a retailer’s website but not purchased a product is ideal prospect information. The database can then be enhanced with demographic data to provide a fuller profile of each individual and supply a bigger picture of the prospect. The consumer’s activity on the retailer’s website, can should be fed into the database so that it informs personalised emails. Data-driven email marketing is the key to successful e-CRM and e-PRM and now makes these two activities a realistic objective for the email marketer.

Response One Group