Aug 30, 2015

That's What You Have Been Looking For!

I've got an email with such a subject lately. Initially I understood it as "We're reading your mind" and it really impressed me as the email was showing different portable batteries for smartphones I was willing to buy last week.

Only a few minutes later I remembered the fact I was visiting their website for those products earlier this week, and the fact I've bought from them a year or two go. So what has happened here? The website has seen their already existing customer browsing for some specific products. He remembered that fact and followed up the customer with an email about those products hours later.

In fact that's a very similar email to abandoned cart follow up, but based on product pages views instead of things put into cart. And it's pretty effective in the era when many of our purchased are based on price but not seller reputation and sometimes customers don't remember their brand at all.

Aug 21, 2015

How Do I Hire a Good Email Marketing Manager?

Frequently I'm seeing businesses facing issues not with setting up email marketing process, but with finding a person who's going to set it up. Sometimes they have to try few email marketing managers before they find the one who can really do the work.

And that's pretty understandable - it isn't easy for a CMO to find a person who's really experienced with email marketing, as the CMO most likely doesn't have that good email marketing understanding.

Here's the list of branches every good email marketer should be an expert in:
- marketing / product part of work;
- email deliverability;
- infrastructure;
- running AB tests, data-driven email development, understanding of business goals (sales or retention but not CTR).

But how could a person who's not an email guru himself distinguish if a candidate really understands all the listed things or just uses the words he has seen across all those email marketing blogs across the web?

I see no way for doing that. The only way is to hire a person and very likely to find out he isn't a good fit months later.

Or... you can ask some email marketing effort to assess knowledge and experience of a candidate. Feel free to ask me to help you with it if you feel the need.

Aug 17, 2015

Email List Acquisition Via Merger

Seems like my internet service provide has been bought by a larger one.

How did I know that? Not in a straightforward way. I've received an email with the info on my internet account balance from an unknown domain. It included my full personal information. At the same time it had a wrong account ID which made me think the email database has been stolen and now some kind of a fraud is happening.

But after checking things for a couple of minutes I discovered the fact it's a message from my new ISP.

How would I deal with email subscribers of a bought business?
1.I'd let the acquired subscribers know about the change by sending an email and a text using a previous name of the provider.
2. At the same time it's a good point to update the expectation of customers on types and frequency of notifications we're going to send them.
3. And of course, I would use a good friendly from but not robot@domain.com which was the case for the email I've got from my ISP.