BrightWave's founder offers tips on building relationships and revenue with your existing email list.

No one likes to leave money on the table. However, most email marketers are doing exactly that after spending a great deal of capital and resources in acquiring new customers and prospects. According to eMarketer, it costs five to 10 times more to acquire a new customer via email than it does to retain an existing one. So why are so many companies leaving their best and most thoughtful work for the hard (and expensive) task of acquiring prospects while their existing customers endure many seemingly basic and generic emails?

Maybe it has to do with company goals or the general melancholy that occurs from running ongoing retention campaigns. It shouldn't. As most marketing managers know, their best customers are already in their database and buying things. While this is certainly not an exclusive problem for online marketers, it is amazing how many companies are following this trend. Half the battle is already done so let's examine some ways to ensure the relationship is strengthened through email, not diluted. 

Amazon pioneered follow up email campaigns based on previous purchases and no doubt generates additional revenue through targeted and personalized emails based on user behavior and demographics. Now many companies include contextual product placement in email newsletters and promotional mailings but most fail to take into account your demographics or purchase (or browsing) history when creating campaign messaging. 

A great example of a company doing an excellent job remarketing is Overstock.com. They send follow up promotional emails based on recent purchase history that are adapted to your interests and purchases. Their emails seem to be actually tailored for me (using most likely a sophisticated analytics program) as opposed to another email, advertising things I am not interested in.

Overstock.com even does what I am shocked most retailers don't. They send special email offers related to previously abandoned shopping carts, meaning I get a further incentive to complete a previous order.  Of course, some retailers won't want to embrace this discounting strategy but if it is inline with their brand and value proposition, I don't see why retailers would not follow up with their customers via Email after they ditch an order. If most brick and mortar stores could follow up with people who left the cashier line with a full bag, I would think these shoppers would be pursued aggressively with a unique and custom offer.  Closing the loop is what this is about and building a relationship rather than hoping to generate sales through a one time email blast.

Many small businesses and service oriented companies are also missing the boat on this opportunity. While sales forces and other on and offline programs (think search, direct mail, et cetera) are doing the dirty work of lead generation and customer acquisition, many email communications programs stop right there at lending a hand (other than generic emails). A small service business, say a landscaping company, may be using more sophisticated acquisition programs but after you are a customer, there should be follow up campaigns beyond a quarterly email that mentions what award they just won or when it is time to prune your crepe myrtles. Why not segment customers based on the following categories?

• Most recent visit
• Size of average bill
• Installation Clients but not maintenance clients
• Maintenance Clients but not installation
• Prospects
• Major Clients
• Previous clients that have not had a service in the past 3, 6 and 12 months

Unique emails could be developed and tailored with custom offers for each group. Someone that just moved into a new house and spent $25,000 on a landscape installation may not care (or even may be offended) if they received an offer for 10 percent off an installation but someone spending $250 a month on maintenance may use that email offer to pull the trigger on a long planned project.  The point is every recipient has unique needs and can be grouped based on their history and potential future. This knowledge is most likely captured by the enterprise so why not use it?

One of the keys behind this, after developing the segmentation strategy, is using the campaign metrics to create the right extension of the initial campaigns. Using open, clickthrough and even forward-specific metrics, can provide invaluable insight into the users level of interest. Just like with sales calls, each recipient can be grouped accordingly to their lead status. Using the landscaping services company analogy, that could be:

• Sale -- Schedule Appointment.  
• Close to Being a Buyer -- Follow Up Personally (Via email, phone call et al) This is based on clicking on the call to action link but not completing the form or purchase.
• Interested -- Sweeten the deal -- Follow Up email within a week with 10 percent off offer. This is based on clicking on a link but not the schedule an appointment or buy now type link.
• Potentially interested -- remarket to in two weeks. This is based on opening email but not clicking through.
• No response -- send a very different email and offer in four weeks.

While each campaign and company will have their own individual dynamics and strengths and weaknesses, most email marketers should perform a basic audit of their campaigns (which will be the topic for a future column) to their most important asset: their customers. Even if a company is using these follow up email marketing tactics and excelling with them, it is always worth the time to ensure you are doing the best you can utilizing email in effective communications to your customer base. It is well worth it in the long run in terms of both revenue and customer loyalty.

G. Simms Jenkins is Founder and Principal of BrightWave Marketing, an Atlanta-based email marketing and customer relationship services firm. He has extensive relationship marketing experience on both the client and agency side. Jenkins has led BrightWave Marketing in establishing a large client list, including marquee clients like GMAC Insurance, CoreNet Global and The Atlanta Journal - Constitution. BrightWave Marketing has become a leader in the Email Marketing outsourcing space by using their expertise in strategy, design, list management, segmenting, delivery and analysis. Jenkins has been recognized by many media outlets as an Email Marketing and CAN-SPAM expert. Prior to BrightWave Marketing, Jenkins was Director of Business Development at two high-tech start-ups and headed the CRM group at Cox Interactive Media, a unit of media giant Cox Enterprises.