Timing is everything, when it comes to email marketing communications

Our friends in the Indian eCommerce space are gung ho about the current boom ! Never before have so many Indians – both in India and overseas filled up their shopping carts and proceeded to check out. Never have Call to Action buttons seen so much action.

Which brings us to one of the most important communication vehicles these propositions ride on……….daily mailers!

Digital direct marketing communication – your one on ones with potential buyers are not as easy as ABC, but if you have been following our blog, you would’ve picked up the juiciest bits on email template best practices and set up a fantastic email template. You know the importance of deliverability and other success metrics and you are sure your recipients are definitely receiving your email campaigns….there’s just one more question you need to ask yourself…. are they reading them?

Some of the key considerations which email marketers must take into mind while creating a “read & respond” campaign are:

• Relevance: making the content relevant to each recipient. If a recipient knows that when your brand arrives in their inbox, this email is definitely something they have expressed an interest in and want to read, they will act on that.
• Segmentation: The best way to implement relevance is to effectively segment your database so you know what your customers are interested in and therefore what content will be the most relevant. You read a lot more on relevance on our blog soon!

You are now ready with that killer content, a solid Email Service Provider (ESP) behind you – btw choosing an ESP can be quite a task , here’s hoping you’ve done it right , what next?

Ask Usain Bolt, what the importance of timing is? No seriously, a great proposition, even with A/B split tested subject lines and creatives can turn horribly wrong if the timing is off . Common sense – nope …….experience !! ( The school of hard knocks third semester )

A well timed campaign – other criteria remaining the same - can work wonders on the open rates and further on the ROI of the campaign. Unfortunately, there is no formula or overall ‘ideal time slot’ which you can follow to achieve this elusive ‘golden hour’. There are a number of factors that go in to your decision: what time is best to hit the send button? ( btw with a good ESP – it would be the Schedule button )

Timing – Day and hour depends on the answers to the following questions.

Who are your audience?

For a B2B audience, it doesn’t take an Einstein to work out that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the optimum days. As we all know, Mondays are spent getting back in to the swing of work after the weekend and Friday sees offices winding down for the next weekend. Saturday and Sunday are redundant as offices are closed. Days before holidays are = Fridays and days after holidays are = Mondays irrespective of what days they fall on !

For B2C email marketing, timings are very different. Very dependant on the demographic of your audience. One can safely assume most prospects will mainly be checking their personal emails in the evenings, during lunchtimes and over the weekends. However it is best to test which brings us back to segmenting! B2C sending can be a bit of a gamble without thorough testing of your specific target audience. Homework must be done and learnings interpreted. A great ESP will be able to deliver dynamic content with different propositions scheduled at different times of a day or even different days.

Is your campaign seasonal?

For the B2B sector, marketers must avoid sending their campaigns over school vacation season, long weekends and of course the many holidays that we have !

Again advice for the B2C sector is entirely opposite. If relevant, a seasonal approach can boost additional sales and therefore revenue. Most campaigns are timed to address seasonal offers!

So much for planned marketing communication…

However, there is another aspect to timing in direct digital communication.

Timing can never be as important as it is when the ‘Prospect ‘is on the verge of becoming a ‘Paying Customer’ …many a sales person have rued their chances – having communicated a little later than they should have.

The optimum time for any recipient to receive your communication is when they have shown an interest in your brand or product. Using Automated mails or trigger campaigns, based on browsing behaviour or when they last clicked on or opened an email gives you a clear indication as to when to send the email and what content to include.

A typical scenario of such lost opportunities would be apparent in a colleague’s recent experience on a very popular online store. As he described it “ I was on my way to check out and proceed to pay when I saw this dangling banner in the right column : Sign up for our newsletter and get 10% off. I paused, thought I could save this 10% by signing up and using the voucher code. So I smartly opened another browser, signed up and waited for the voucher. About an hour later, neither my inbox nor my spam folder had any sign of an email from these guys . I gave up hope and eventually had lost all interest in buying that item at 10% higher than I could’ve”.

A simple Triggered email could have, rather, should have been used here to enable interest being converted to action at the point when the customer is most engaged.

Another cyclic practice is communication with non responders. Winning back non responders should be taken up as a part of your communication calendar and a definite cog in your wheel .

While still on timing, or should I say while there is time – it would be good to remind you to look for patterns in your open and click-through rates or other email metrics. Whether certain offers work better when sent at some time or another? Are there any influences that make your campaigns more successful, like salary days ( beginning of the month ) ? Are you responding to your customers at the optimum moment?

The only way for you to determine what works best for you is to, as always, test, test, test!

Email Marketing Solutions and Services in India by World class company with International Expertise

Indian Marketers can now get world class email marketing solution and services from Aghreni, a company with 5+ years of international experience in building email marketing solutions and supporting Fortune 500 clients for their email campaigns.

Within a short span of five months starting the Indian operations, Aghreni has signed up 20 companies in it’s account, offering integrated email and mobile messaging services. The platform is currently being evaluated by another 15 companies including some of the leading Private sector Banks and Travel portals.

The platform delivered more than 10 Million emails so far. The numbers are increasing 100% over each month. Aghreni is confident that the number of emails delivered through its platform will continue to increase exponentially over the next months, as it has increased its sales and focus on highly customer centric companies which have a potential to send out millions of emails.

Aghreni also brings its own RupeeMail acquisition brand for companies to acquire customers. Rupeemail has a doubly opt-in list of 250,000 profiles across India, that can be profiled on 23 + different segments. Over 1 million plus RupeeMails were delivered in April 2009 and few of the RupeeMail campaigns for the month include Get Tata AIG Maharaksha (Tata AIG Insurance), The Unique Pension Planner ( Aegon Religare), Register, Play And Win Big ( Virgin Mobile), Jaldibid.com ( Tanla Solutions ) & Travelocity Special Offers. Aghreni has partnered with 10+ companies to offer email list rental services to Corporates looking for quality emails list rentals in India. Aghreni and its partners offer over 5 million doubly opt-in email profiles for companies to acquire customers. The profile includes consumers, IT/ITES employees, HNIs, CXOs, Small and Medium Business Enterprises, Distributors, Doctors, Finance Managers, Corporate Decision Makers etc. The profiles can be targeted based on age, city, industry, income group and other attributes.

Aghreni's clients include leading Internet portals, Software product companies, Retail brands,Education and training institutions, Travel companies and Hotels and Restaurant chains. Aghreni’s email and mobile marketing platform provides a compelling reason for marketers to use email marketing as one of the most viable e-channels to reach out to the fast growing online customer database in India.

For more information, visit http://www.aghreni.com

Aghreni delivers 2 million emails for Indian Marketers in the month of March 2009 alone

Aghreni Technologies, leader in interactive email and mobile marketing recently published the numbers to the Industry.

It sent about 2,000,000 emails in the month of March 2009 alone, on behalf of its clients through its leading email and mobile marketing platform within 3 months of its operations in India.

Aghreni delivered these emails into recipients inboxes with 98% and above deliverability. The open rates exceeded marketers expectations at above 12%, which is way ahead of Industry benchmarks in India. The click through rates (CTR) are in excess of 25 to 30%. Its platform was able to deliver almost all the emails across all ISPs (including rediff, rediffmail.com, in.com, sify.com) without getting its emails rejected or blocked by the ISPs, which is a major issue for most of the Indian marketers. Indian Marketers are quite amazed at Aghreni's platform features, its ease of use, and powerful metrics. They were able to improve the quality of their database significantly over the campaigns and learn several best email practices to deliver the message to inbox. The platform demonstrated how marketing messages are getting delivered into all ISPs (blocked, rejected, delivered, and spam complaints). Some of the clients are quite excited with the viral marketing features in generating additional leads. The platform provides advanced features like which sections in the email message is getting clicks from recipients most, providing marketers with the knowledge about their offer positioning and creating interest. The platform also provides features on when the message is being read and clicked in real time, so that marketers can send the email message at the appropriate time.

Aghreni's clients include leading internet portals, software development companies, retail brands, education and training institutions and hotels and restaurants.

Aghreni has already 10+ clients in India and fast expanding its clients base across all verticals. Aghreni is very optimistic in delivering more emails on behalf of its client in the next few month and provide marketers with a compelling reason to use email marketing as one of the viable e-channel to reach out to their growing online customer database in India.

Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has many many years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands across the world. Aghreni brings a world class email marketing platform to the marketers to effectively measure their email marketing campaigns and reap success.

For more information on the product, please visit Aghreni's website at

http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

Aghreni delivers 1.5 million emails for Indian Marketers in less than 2 months of its operations

Aghreni Technologies, leader in interactive email and mobile marketing recently published the numbers to the Industry.

It sent about 1,450,000 emails on behalf of its clients through its leading email and mobile marketing platform in just less than 2 months of its operations in India.

Aghreni delivered these emails into recipients inboxes with 98% and above deliverability. The open rates exceeded marketers expectations at above 10 to 12%. The click through rates (CTR) are in excess of 25 to 30%. Indian Marketers are quite amazed at Aghreni's platform features, its ease of use, and powerful metrics. The platform demonstrated how marketing messages are getting delivered
into all ISPs (blocked, rejected, delivered, and spam complaints). Some of the clients are quite excited with the viral marketing features in generating additional leads. The platform provides advanced features like which sections in the email message is getting clicks from recipients most, providing marketers with the knowledge about their offer positioning and creating interest. The platform also provides features on when the message is being read and clicked in real time, so that marketers can send the email message at the appropriate time.

Aghreni's clients include leading internet portals, software development companies, retail brands, education and training institutions and hotels and restaurants.

Aghreni has already 10+ clients in India and fast expanding its clients base across all verticals.

Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has many many years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands across the world. Aghreni brings a world class email marketing platform to the marketers to effectively measure their email marketing campaigns and reap success.

For more information on the product, please visit Aghreni's website at

http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

Aghreni's email and mobile messaging platform to deliver localised rich content for marketers to target vernacular demographics

Aghreni's bulk email and mobile messaging platform can deliver rich HTML content in Indian languages for Indian Marketers to target the non-english speaking segments.

Aghreni demonstrated the platform features to leading marketers in India and several have shown interest to target the non-english speaking segments in non-metro towns across the country.



Aghreni's platform is an ideal choice for marketers to deliver marketing campaigns through rich HTML message on email and mobile messages through SMS channels. It has powerful reporting features to track the delivery (opens, clicks, bounces), inbox deliverability and spam complaints from ISPs (yahoo, gmail, hotmail, rediff).

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

Email Delivery Optimization Techniques from Email Marketing Solutions Provider - Aghreni Technology

There is a misconception with marketers and providers that email marketing software is a bulk mailing solution. When the emails are blasted out of a bulk mailer, they are assured that it will reach the recipient’s inboxes. Is that so simple?

Does your email marketing software or service provider guarantee email delivery optimization?

Certainly most do not!

There is a misconception with marketers and providers that email marketing software is a bulk mailing solution. When the emails are blasted out of a bulk mailer, they are assured that it will reach the recipient’s inboxes. Is that so simple?

Let us look at some of the email deliverability myths that most marketers seem to have.

1. We don’t spam!

2. We send emails only to opt-in lists

3. Someone has blacklisted us for no reason

4. ISPs (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL) treat us badly

5. If our emails reach recipient’s junk folders, we will request recipient to add us to safe lists



We don’t send Spam!

The marketers first need understand the definition of Spam! It is not just the Viagra or the porn stuff! Any message that doesn’t suit the need of the customer is spam, whether it is the message subject line, content, broken or dodgy HTML code, relevance, frequency of the emails, etc. Moreover, messages that do not comply with CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003) act may be classified as SPAM by receiving ISPs.

Marketers have to stop sending messages that are boring, mundane and uninteresting. Marketers need to check if their messages are CAN-SPAM compliant. Marketers have to monitor their campaigns reports like opens, clicks, spam complaints, and abuses from their customers and ISPs. If they don’t, they may be surprised to see sometime later, their messages are being categorized as SPAM and lying in junk folders or being blocked by ISPs.



We send emails only to opt-in lists

Sending email campaigns to opt-in lists is a good practice, because you are assured of good deliverability. But have you given control to your opt-in customers, the power to opt-out or unsubscribe in each campaign? If you haven’t, start doing it now. Even if you have given the power to opt-out or unsubscribe, are you acting promptly within a reasonable time (with one week) to stop sending further email campaigns? Have you opted them again, after a reasonable amount of time through another promotional campaign? Are you acting on bounces and taking action to get your list cleaned out of bounced email addresses? Are you educating your opt-in subscribers, to opt-out instead of complaining to ISPs about abuses from you? Are you capturing the opt-in subscriber preferences to send relevant campaigns that suit their interests and the frequency of email campaigns in a given period?

The success of keeping your list clean and emails reaching out to your opt-in customers lies in understanding the needs of the opt-in subscribers, measuring the success of each email campaign and working to address the issues above. If you don’t, even your opt-in customers will soon be opting out or complaining you to ISPs on email campaigns as SPAMs.



Someone has blacklisted us for no reason

Emails Marketers have to understand that email communication is being heavily abused by spammers around the world. For every genuine email sent, there are 90 others which are spam. Most of the email service providers and companies are putting tough measures to block spam emails reaching their infrastructure or for processing and storing Spam emails and damaging their employee productivity. There are service providers who constantly scout for spammers, monitor their activities on the web and maintain a list of their IP addresses (blacklist). They provide various companies the blacklisted IPs, to block the email senders from that IPs. The black list service providers employ various complex and advance techniques to monitor increased email sending, patterns, and their web crawlers checking various things on their servers, and etc. to collect lot of statistics to classify them into the blacklist.

Hence Marketers need to understand the challenges if they are using their own bulk mailing solutions and constantly monitor if their IPs are blacklisted by any service providers. They should take immediate action, if needed with those service providers and get their IPs white listed.



ISPs (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL) treat us badly

Most of the opt-in customers have their email addresses on the major 4 ISPs Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Hence Marketers will be sending a bulk of their emails to these 4 ISPs. They have to ensure that their emails are getting delivered to recipient’s inboxes on these ISPs. Why should these ISPs block the marketer’s emails? They have several reasons and some of them have been stated earlier. Most of the ISPs provide free email infrastructure to their customers and hence they need to optimize their email infrastructure. They have to protect their recipient’s privacies and their reputation as the best ESP in the world.

The emails in those ISPs may also bounce for various reasons like account deletion, inbox full, etc. The sender email server or the email service provider has to remove these bounced addresses from the next mailing; else the ISPs may treat you as a spammer and deny service.

Major ISPs such as Google, AOL and MSN/Hotmail provide their users to complain on the sender of the emails or domains. The ISPs also have strong authentication and dynamic filtering mechanisms that your email software and service provider have to deal with.

If your email marketing software or email service provider doesn’t implement the authentication response mechanisms, adjusting to the filtering policies of the ISPs and dealing with the abuse complaints, there is no reason to complain against their unfair treatment!



If our emails reach recipient’s junk folders, we will request recipient to add us to safe lists

This is a myth that marketers have! If they request the recipients to add the sender email address into the recipient’s safe list, then the messages will be reaching the inbox. While this may be true, it still doesn’t address the deliverability of the sender emails.

ISPs will deliver the email to the recipient’s inbox after their server has successfully received the email, passing through white listed sender IP reputation, authentication mechanisms, dynamic filters (which are changing every moment).

Then there are other questions that marketers need to understand?

1. Does the marketer always use the same send email id for sending different promotions? Is there a need to use different email ids for different e-mail communications like newsletters, campaigns, promotions? What about from different brands or departments in the company?

2. Do you see a recipient adding every marketer’s email ids into the safe list? What is the guarantee that you will not start sending irrelevant and innumerable email communications to the recipient?

If you don’t have answers for most of these questions, then this trick will not work in most of the cases. The marketer is back to seeing his email moved to junk folders and soon deliverability takes a hit.



Email Marketing is a disciplined process and in order to get it right and realize the benefits, Marketers have to work with companies and agencies who really understand the science and art of email marketing.

If not, there will no differentiation between your marketing campaigns and the spammer’ campaigns. Ultimately the recipient’s and the ISP’s are the better judges.

Hence it is very important to measure the success of each of your email marketing campaigns.



Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has over 4 years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands across the world.

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

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.

Online advertising is the biggest driver of brand engagement for retailers

IAB research shows online ad spend achieves 40% of the communications effect within the media mix for retail brands. Online, press and TV are the strongest drivers of brand engagement within this market.

The latest Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) cross-media Brand Engagement study has found that online advertising for retail brands delivers the biggest effect in the media mix, driving 40% of brand engagement, compared with press (31%) and TV (19%).

The average online ad spend for all five brands in the study was just 2.5% of total media budget, which suggests that internet advertising – which delivered 40% of brand engagement across all communications – is around 16 times more effective than the monetary investment would suggest. To put this into perspective, in the second half of 2007, the retail sector accounted for just 5% of all internet advertising expenditure, whilst total consumer spending on products, goods and services online for 2007 was £47 billion.

Aghreni Technologies is customer centric ROI driven provider of email and mobile marketing solutions and services to Indian Marketers.

Aghreni brings in several years of working experience with global leaders in email and mobile marketing and marketing campaigns for leading brands.