In this week’s issue of BtoB’s Email Marketer Insight, Karen J. Bannan provides these suggestions to maximize your e-mail customer lifecycle program:

1) Welcome prospects. By now, you are probably using triggered e-mails to welcome new prospects to your marketing or newsletter program, and if you’re not, you should be. “The whole concept is to send prospects a welcome message that tells them in detail what they’ve signed up for, and what they should expect to receive,” Price said.

Your next step should be feeding prospects a curriculum of information, training and special offers tailored to someone who has stepped forward and raised their hand as a potential customer. Never throw new prospects into your existing customer e-mail list, Price said.

“They haven’t been explained the value proposition,” he said. “They don’t know how to interpret your business. Send a welcome letter first. Your next message should be an attempt to explain why they should be your customer in bite-sized pieces, and how they can do so.” 

2) Consider customers’ needs. The moment a prospect becomes a
customer, you have a 30- to 90-day window of opportunity to sell to
them again, Price said. “It’s the old vacuum story,” he said. “If your
customer buys a vacuum, they are going to need vacuum bags in 60 days.
You’ll want to take that paradigm and use it with your own products and
services.”

Clients see these types of e-mails as highly valuable; your company
cares about them and is looking out for their well-being. Send e-mails
that offer additional products and services, as well as tips and tricks
for getting the most out of new purchases. And don’t forget to include
multiple paths to your company in the e-mail. Is there a user group or
forum associated with your company? Provide links and even pull-quotes
from ongoing discussions. Do you have an after-hours help hotline? Let
your customer know. 

3) Drop lapsed customers. E-mail is an inexpensive medium, so
some companies mistakenly think they should keep sending messages even
if those messages end up unread in a long-lost customer’s in-box. Not
so, Price said.

“If someone is only six months lapsed, it might be a good
opportunity to send an incentive e-mail to get them to be active
again,” he said. Consider sending a message that takes a page from
magazine publishers, giving recipients fair warning that this message
could be their last unless they stand up and opt in again. If they
don’t, think of it as an opportunity, Price said.

“If you’re taking off all the lapsed people and only mailing to the
people who have activity, then you are going to get a much higher
conversion rate and click-through rate on your list,” he said.

Source: BtoB’s Email Marketer Insight, July 20, 2006