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MAILING TO
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Six Best Practices to get Maximum Return &
Revenue from your Million-Plus Email Database WhatCounts | Mailing To Millions
Mailing to Millions
Six Best Practices to get Maximum Return & Revenue from your Million-Plus Email Database There's no reason overseeing and managing a million-plus subscriber email database should be a discombobulated and overbearing task. Start being an effective email marketer by creating a plan, brushing up on your skills, and cleaning house. Implementing these six simple tweaks will go a long way towards maximizing the return, response, and revenue from your email program.
Have a Plan with the Big Picture in MindA larger list usually equates to more attention, expectations, and effort. Use your data, and leverage your staff, executive sponsor, and your email service provider to create a roadmap to success. Get buy in from above and across other business channels, and share your goals and objectives across the board. Setup weekly, monthly, and quarterly reporting on your campaigns and perform regular assessments of your program to ensure all efforts are working towards achieving the desired results. Make sure your plan is
"Beware the batch and blast mentality (always think, how would I react if I received this?)"
sustainable. Beware the batch and blast mentality (always think, how would I react if I received this?), think strategically, targeted, and don't forget about delivery! Email marketing programs that perform the best do not sacri?ce long-term pro?tability for short-term return. Keep your focus narrowed, consistent, and report on what's relevant.
Know Your PlatformIt is crucial that you and your team have a better than average understanding of the capabilities of your email service provider, especially with a large database. You don't need to be an expert, but you should feel right at home navigating through the system, understand its reporting, and know if it can support your ambitions. Make sure your corporate language maps to what your email service is reporting, and if your language does differ, make sure
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you can translate! If a brush up on your system is needed, or you just aren't quite sure about a function, contact your provider.
Get Your Database OrganizedChances are, your database is multi-faceted, with multiple subscriber lists, templates, reports, and segmentation rules that make ?nding anything a chore. What's worse, these countless variables make the chance of errors "The best-run email on deployment high. The best-run email programs are those that organize by programs are those vertical or marketing effort. Create folders for different groups and name that organize by them something that clearly spells out what's stored there (keep it simple!), vertical or marketing and then migrate everything to their new homes. If you have lists within effort." lists, campaigns within campaigns, or old reports for which you've forgotten the details or context, create sub-folders for each (for your old and irrelevant items, move them out of sight, and out of mind, by creating archive sub-folders). This linear approach will make ?nding a list or template to edit, or campaign to deploy, that much easier. Here is an example of how you could organize one vertical:
Standardize EverythingBuilding on what we've already discussed, a large database mean lots of opportunities to create interesting ways to name things, but also provides ample opportunity for human error. Standardize your naming convention for everything. Avoid complex, or long and drawn out titles like, "marketing_customer1_campaign1_ddmmyy." Your design objective for naming should be that anyone can look at the title and ?gure out its purpose. Keep it simple, but relevant to the material. Don't bother going back and renaming all your prior data, as it would cause confusion when accessing
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older information, and make sure you manage to the changes you've made. Leverage your partnership with your internet service provider (ISP) to ensure you're operating as ef?ciently as possible. Use thei... [download for more]
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