Thread Strategy: Built For E-commerce How Effective Could E-mail Be” – Part 1

Is a “thread strategy” for you? Have you already purchased a web to e-mail marketing system, but aren’t getting the results you’d expected? Is it designed into your sales, service or e-commerce apparatus? If you’ve considered implementing a multimedia marketing campaign as a method to boost sales opportunities, lead generation, and deeper customer engagement, then this brief summary is for you.

Let me start by introducing the scenario of two business people to set out the merits of implementing a program of your own:

Consider two business people, we’ll call Cole and Trevor. Cole is a software engineer in California’s South Bay and has successfully developed apps for a niche consumer market. Trevor studied management information systems and manages a consulting firm. Cole and Trevor have been friends from college, where their class load commonly overlapped. These days, they meet twice a week to play tennis at a local health club. Since college, they both married, started families and have led pretty similar lives. As good friends, they have shared stock tips, coordinated camping trips, airline miles and political positions.

Many of the information sources Cole and Trevor have exchanged have also included newsletters they both subscribe to. In much the manner, they’ve each weighed the information from these newsletters to make decisions such as appliances, homes, cars, travel and college selections for their teenage children.

Why This Matters
We spend a sizable amount of time each on computers and pocket computers where we browse, shop, check e-mail and respond to text messages. Consequently, this represents an effective way to communicate with your customers – regardless of what industry you are in. How effective is it? It was effective enough to represent the highest return on investment by the Data and Marketing Association (formerly the American Marketing Association). Harnessing these mobile communication habits and practices present the opportunity to:

1 – Gain a deeper understanding of what your customer’s needs are so you can improve your product or service offering;
2 – Request the specific feedback from your customers. That means knowing what you don’t know and asking your customers the right questions to find out.
3 – Better define who your ideal customer, so that your ROI can be better measured.

Next: In our next segment, we’ll look at how Cole and Trevor view e-subscriptions from the view of a consumer and business.