By Julian Lynch
Online Marketing Account Manager
Email newsletters and other marketing communications may look relatively straightforward in terms of their design. However, behind the scenes are a whole set of tools and tracking features that provide a new way of delivering online marketing. As a result email marketing delivers what both marketers and customers have been waiting for since the early days of the Internet i.e. a mutually beneficial relationship between businesses and customers.
Email marketing is a true two-way dialogue-building platform. Not only do customers receive relevant and anticipated information, full tracking and reporting enables them to communicate to marketers what they are interested in and what they are not interested in and the reasons why.
As the email newsletter campaign progresses, each mailing lets both customers and companies learn more and more about each other. This is turn serves as the foundation for strong, long-lasting relationships between the two. Along the way, there are several more marketing benefits that prove that the return on respecting customers online is measurable in more ways than one.
Email campaigns such as those managed by Interactive Return often use email and companion micro-sites to provide recipients with information that they require. The email message displays content while the microsite acts as a feedback collection point that shows marketers which articles the customer reads, spends the most time with and passes on to colleagues through referral mechanisms.
By studying campaign reports, marketers can then dynamically customise the content for the next email newsletter based on the pages that their customers are most interested in. As each new issue is created and distributed, the learning becomes richer and more useful.
Not only does email marketing tell companies what their customers are interested in, it can provide much deeper insights that go above and beyond content views.
For example, a survey embedded in the newsletter can allow customers not only provide feedback on the quality of information provided in the newsletter, but can also facilitate them in communicating their product requirements. A tracking mechanism can tell where in the email newsletter readers are most likely to click through to a transaction page and follow a call to action.
What began as an email newsletter suddenly becomes a dynamic, multi-purpose tool that supplies the kind of customer feedback that can impact both sales and marketing at virtually every step of the awareness-to-purchase process.
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