How are companies adopting email marketing in India

India is seeing a larger attention in digital marketing space as younger and older population are getting online and their spending habits online fuelled by already established online travel companies which made their life much easier. Indian online population is enjoying now the ease with which they can book their tickets, or buying things at much cheaper prices.

Email being one of the prime digital channels for companies to continuously engage with their large subscriber base, Indian companies have long attempted multiple solutions from in-house SMTP mailers to MTA boxes to Email Solution Providers (ESP) of all sizes. As the internet email regulations have evolved over time and often dictated by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like yahoo, hotmail, Gmail and such and their continued redefinition of the rules for accepting and delivering mails to the inboxes of the recipients, Indian companies are more and more trying to use the Email Service Providers.

This has provided an opportunity for several companies to jump into providing bulk email solutions.

Some of the Indian companies have attempted to easily take some open source solutions like PHP Mailer and such and modifying or building to the needs of the Indian companies. These solutions mostly lack the authentication features required by ISPs like DKIM and speed throttling. Most of the solutions are not built for managing entire email life cycle communication and the data privacies required. Their infrastructure is not scalable and can't be separated for each of their client. This will complicate issues like IP and domain reputation. A company which has very good email practices can easily get hurt by some other company which has no good practices if they use such email solutions. Indian companies still being very slow and averse to use confirmed opt-in practices, can easily get their domain blacklisted and ISPs can soon either put their mails in spam folder or start blocking their mails.

Moreover these solutions that are not built for analytic driven marketing lack the analytic features. This makes the marketer not aware of his engaged audience by demographics, email behaviour and purchase behaviour. With no knowledge of such intelligence, Indian companies who are using such solutions are blindly shooting the mails to all subscribers, without knowing what their subscribers are doing with those emails. This can also treated by ISPs as bad senders and emails may be blocked or sent to spam folders by ISPs.

According to Reputation Authority, Indian Companies using home grown email communication platforms are sending more than 40% spam. It is very difficult for Indian email marketing solution providers to control the spam rate, as their solutions are not very sophisticated to handle all kinds of bounces, spam complaints and spam traps. Moreover there is no intelligence to analyse the active and inactive subscriber base over time.

They also lack the integration features for companies to manage their entire life cycle email communication with one solution and work with the company's portal and back end systems seamlessly.

Seeing the growth in the internet population and recent explosion in e-commerce and daily deals, several international email service providers (ESPs) have now entered the Indian market through sales team located elsewhere or in India and offering their more matured platforms to Indian companies. This is a most welcome trend.

Now there are more companies offering such solutions, the price competition is so much, International email service providers are competing with the Indian email service providers on price and dropping the account management, project management and integration features for Indian companies. When their minimum ticket size is more than 100K US Dollars per client in matured markets of USA and Europe, and they throw in a dedicated account manager, solutioning to automate the clients email communication and providing full services, the international email service providers are just providing a software tool to send bulk mails to Indian companies, with none of those needed services that are very much needed by Indian companies, as they are trying to adopt email as an effective medium.

According to Reputation Authority, even the international email service providers that are providing email platform as a tool for sending bulk email communications for Indian companies are not able to bring the spam to single digit, as they are not able to work with the Indian clients to strategise their email marketing efforts.

I see Indian companies as they trying to adopt email communication as a prime medium for their online business, is largely under served by both Indian companies who lack features and International email service providers who can't provide much needed strategy and expertise with local resources for companies to better engage their subscribers.

Email cost measured in CPM (cost per thousand) may be a deciding factor when you choose the email service provider. While each ESP may have a cost per CPM to compete, a self managed email platform may not be a single decisive factor.

Indian companies have to start looking at not only the platform, but also need to look at the expertise of the email service provider on their mailing infrastructure, security practices for their data, expertise in email marketing, though leadership, ability to do customizations, integrate their websites and backend systems for life cycle email communication and ability for managing their email campaigns.

I see some Indian companies have understood the importance of much needed services along with the email platform and are choosing the email service provider based on a broad spectrum and depth of services and expertise offered to better optimize the email medium.

I believe that most matured and smart Indian Companies are trying to stop blasting the emails to all in blind everyday and start using intelligent analytic driven customer engagement email communication in the days ahead.

This is most welcome news for the most spammed Indian Internet consumer.

Aghreni email marketing platform turns into Sprinklr e-messenger

We are rebranding the Aghreni emailing platform, and your favourite service will be called Sprinklr from here on. We are going to introduce a lot many more features in the coming times which will make your email marketing experience much more sophisticated and advanced. With killer edge technology Sprinklr will bring in the same drip marketing phenomenon into your consumers social graph resulting in a much higher conversion rates and consumer's brand interaction.

At Sprinklr we promise you to give a world class product at an Indian price. We will be soon ready with the new website and will be announcing the new board members.

Sprinklr is confident to take the Indian market by a swipe in the recent coming days and would love to have you join the revolution. So make sure you realise the potential of this platform before your competition does.

For more insight on this please email jacob@sprinklr.in or, just call him @ +91 9886800993

Visit Sprinklr website at http://sprinklr.in/sprinklr/

High quality, low costs keep IT product companies ticking

Aghreni Technologies, an e-mail and mobile marketing services company, has acquired more than half a dozen clients in the Indian market. Aghreni MD Manjunatha Kutarahalli said their differentiated offering with open source technologies has helped them bag clients in the past three months, which include large Indian business houses.



Read the entire article on Economic Times website
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/no-downturn-in-it-product-cos/articleshow/4289757.cms

End to End Email and Mobile Marketing automation Solutions and Services for Marketers

Aghreni Technologies, that is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business is offering e-messenger, email and mobile marketing automation platform that can send high volume emails and mobile messages with high deliverability.

Team Aghreni has over 4 years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world's largest brands. Aghreni's email and mobile messaging platform called e-messenger services over a 900clients in Europe, Asia and the USA.

Aghreni's platform is a hosted solution and it takes less than 48 hours to get on the platform for the first campaign.

Moreover Aghreni's platform is the most economical to use. The platform guarantees inbox deliverability with major ISPs (hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc.). The platform is easy to use, integrate with Clients backend CRM, ERP and other systems and moreover, Aghreni is the only large scale professional company to provide local support in India.

In addition, Clients will be working one of the most advanced and feature rich platform and deriving benefits like high quality of email deliverability, which only the biggest global email service providers can guarantee.

Aghreni with its partner RupeeMail (http://www.rupeemail.in) brings in doubly opted-in customer database of customer profiles across India to Marketers in India for acquiring customers.

For more details, visit URL http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

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Aghreni Technologies Private Limited is a provider of email and mobile marketing automation solutions and services to clients world-wide. Aghreni Technologies has many years of experience with leading global companies in the world and managing marketing campaigns for global brands. Aghreni is spear-headed by a senior team of highly qualified and experienced professionals from online marketing industry including Manjunatha KG (Managing Director), Ram Krishnaswamy (Head Business Solutions) and Raghunandan Mysore (Head Infrastructure and Operations). The company aims to provide end to end solutions and services for marketers for customer acquisition, rentention and loyalty.

Use Email and Mobile Marketing to increase Customer Loyalty

It is increasingly becoming a necessity to keep customers informed on your business to gain their loyalty for repeat business and recommendations, in the face of current economy. While there are traditional mediums for marketing the business in local newspapers, magazines, billboards, television or radio spots, these mediums are very expensive costing several lakhs of Rupees every month or year.

There are online tools like email and mobile communication mediums that provide cost effective media for marketing campaigns, from limited-time specials, new product or service offerings, coupons, birthday or anniversary offers, seasonal items, newsletters, customer surveys and special or discounted pricing to entice customers to return. It is also a conduit for data collection - the more information a company has about its customer base, the more clearly it will understand its client demographics, purchase behaviors and shopping habits. In turn, the company can utilize the knowledge to market more effectively in the future.

Email and Mobile marketing can provide excellent benefits to business.

1. It Increases customer loyalty: E-mail marketing can grow brand awareness, strengthen customer relationships and encourage trust.

2. It Saves money: E-mail marketing eliminates the costs associated with traditional direct mail—such as printing and postage—and costs significantly less than other forms of traditional advertising.

3. It Improves customer contact: Since e-mail marketing is turn-key, a business owner can send messages and updates to customers more frequently.

4. It Provides trackable results: The number of individuals who open and read the e-mail, and the number of e-mails forwarded, are only a few examples of what statistics can be tracked.

5. It Offers targeted content: Businesses are able to segment their database to provide specific clients with targeted messages based on their tracked results.

6. It Generates action: E-mail promotions and offers generate immediate action, whether through sales, click-throughs, inquiries, registrations, etc.

Some tech-savvy business owners elect to do email or mobile marketing on their own, however, there are many firms that specialize in email and mobile marketing as well. The benefit to outsourcing your campaign is that companies specializing in email and mobile marketing are able to provide superior technology (such as a custom graphic design and detailed tracking results) and better results. Simply stated, if an individual uses their own mail engine or a mobile gateway to deploy an email or mobile campaign, they can encounter problems with deliverability, tracking, creativity and design capability.

With an email or mobile marketing specialty firm, you are assured that:

Your emails and SMS messages are delivered. What is the sense in sending out an email or SMS campaign if it does not reach the end-user? With spam continuing to rise, specialty e-mail marketing firms provide advanced deliverability tools to ensure that an e-mail campaign has high deliverability rates and is less likely to be categorized as spam or junk mail. In addition, e-mail marketing companies have relationships with various mail engines (such as AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, MSN, Comcast, etc.) to help get your message to an inbox. Also your providers works with mobile gateway providers and telecom operators to ensure that the SMS messages are received by the mobile phones.

Your mailing list is segmented. E-mail marketing specialty firms have the ability to segment a list based on the information you provide, whether it’s the date of a client’s last visit, his/her birthday, etc. This function is critical because it allows you to target specific segments of your list, which enhances the likelihood of a return.

* Your e-mails are custom-designed. E-mail marketing firms can design a template that is creative and appeals to the look and feel of your salon. It is important to provide a consistent image to clients.

* Your campaign is automated. Each e-mail provides the end-user with an opportunity to unsubscribe automatically—requiring little to no maintenance for you. Moreover, new clients will be automatically included on the master e-mail list.

* Your e-mails are tracked. E-mail marketing firms provide comprehensive tracking reports, including details such as who is opening the e-mail, what is being clicked, who is unsubscribing, who is subscribing and more. Tracking is critical because it gathers data that will help pinpoint which campaigns and promotions are most effective.

If you do decide to hire a firm to take care of your e-mail marketing needs, be aware that there are two types of companies available—full-service and DIY. A full-service firm handles all aspects of an e-mail campaign from custom design to list management to detailed tracking reports. The DIY model gives you, the salon owner, more control because you are in charge of choosing from among the e-mail template designs provided by the company as well as maintaining your own client lists. Of course, there are benefits to both models and it is suggested that a business owner finds the company that is best suited for his or her specific salon needs.

Aghreni is a full service provider of email and mobile marketing software, solutions and services to Indian business.

Email Marketing Trends

Every business using email marketing is trying to improve the relevance of using the media for managing the returns on the investment made towards email campaigns. Email marketing itself is finding its relevance by more targeted communications, moving away from email blasts.

The key trends are:

1. Targeting: Email list segmentation is increasingly being used as the best practice to improve the relevance and targeting of selected customers. The businesses are making a conscious effort to capture increase demographics and purchase behavior information of customers to create multiple, highly customized lists.

2. Personalization: Businesses have understood the value of personalizing their email marketing communications, using salutations, first and last names and personalizing the messages using the stored demographic and purchase behavior attributes of the individual.

3. Deliverability: Deliverability concerns persist among businesses of all sizes. Leading Email Service Providers continued to address the deliverability of the email communications of the businesses, by including automated CAN SPAM compliance checks, dedicated deliverability personnel, relationships with third party deliverability services such as Return Path, employing Dynamic Message Transfer Agents (MTAs) and working with ISPs closely to integrate authentication mechanisms.

In addition, the email marketing service providers worked with businesses in supporting and advancing email marketing best practices, by maintaining clean lists and improving email relevance with better targeting and personalization tactics.

4. Email Automation: Businesses are looking for designing, creating and conducting automated trigger email campaigns. Leading email service providers are providing life cycle based event and time based triggered email communication to consumers. This will greatly enhance the experience of the consumers through relevance and timing.

5. Integrated Campaigns: The rise of SEO, SEM, Mobile, Social Media and Social Networking have made business to look for closer integration with email marketing campaigns with SEO, SEM, Mobile and Social media tactics. With businesses adopting CRM and lead generation systems, email marketing is getting integrated into these systems for better targeting and personalization of email communications.

6. Hygiene Lists: Lingering concerns about deliverability will make businesses to scrub their email lists and subscriber data. Economic pressures for improving performance across all marketing channels will contribute to this trend, in addition to the need for clean when integrating email marketing with CRM and lead generation systems.

Aghreni Technologies is a customer centric, ROI driven provider of integrated email and mobile marketing solutions and services to indian businesses.