2011 Top Post: 17 Resolutions for Email Marketers (Mobile & Social too!)

Here are a 17 resolutions for every digital marketer. Try to include these as part of your strategy and keep integrating email, mobile, and social as your digital interactive channels.

1 - I will redo my Welcome messaging - by creating a compelling must have message that engages the consumer from day one. I will make sure that this message is updated regularly and will include real consumer input as part of this message.

2 - I will create transactional triggers – think about specific messages for specific transactions. Create these messages and automate the sending process. Review your results weekly.

3 - I will work hard on growing my digital list – you need to set realistic goals and involve your team in growing your email, mobile, & social media lists across all channels. Remember the transactional triggers – enable them for your non-web channels as well.

4 - I will create a preference center – a real cross channel preference center that will solicit recipient preferences, update preferences based on user interaction, & keep the preference tables updated through surveys.

5 - I will watch the frequency of my campaigns – so as not to startle, or numb the recipient from the excessive barrage (or the out of the blue email) of messaging. You can make this effective by tracking your open rates per consumer across multiple campaigns and not just one.

6 - I will keep surveying the consumer - include a survey link in every email to solicit recipient opinion. Leverage other channels into collecting user preferences. Think hard about the questions too – don’t use the survey to score how well you are doing. Use the survey to connect with the recipient.

7 - I will survey the non-buyer – reach out to people that don’t buy from you and try to get their opinion. Make them a priority – you will learn something good about your program, get an opportunity to try new things on people that don’t seem to respond, & perhaps convert someone.

8 - I will work with the call center, brick & mortar channels – yes, we all resolve to do it each year. But here is what you should do – first engage them by pushing offers their way, & two show them all the different ways you can track people. The more involved they are in your campaigns the more they will support you.

9 - I will test before I launch – test each campaign before you put it out. Have three types of tests – first – a sanity test on what the campaign should do, second involve your team to see what they think will work (and let them find errors), third – test it out on a sub-section of your recipients before you send it out to your entire list.

10 - I will work on subject lines – these drive open rates and engagement. A good subject line can also be leveraged into Facebook or Twitter. Take some time to come up with them rather than just slapping them on last minute. In fact, set a goal to solicit subject lines from your peers and narrow them down with testing.

11 - I will monitor my deliverability – watch your delivered and blocks on every campaign. Don’t mess this up – keep your IP’s clean by keeping your customers and prospects on different IP’s.

12 - I will monitor my metrics – for all my campaigns. You need to look at all your numbers across channels. Innovative marketers this year will actually start measuring success across channels – start campaigns on one channel and transfer people to another. Also, share your reports with other people in your organization.

13 - I will integrate social media into my email. Social media is an effective way to engage the consumer. Integrating social into your email will help you build relationships, increase engagement, & drive some very powerful results.

14 - I will play the role of a customer. (Take a look at your campaigns as a consumer). Make a checklist of things that you like about your campaigns. See if the path makes sense, and if the marketing is up to par. Track your subscribe & unsubscribe process.

15 - I will respond to queries and comments – good or bad, and will do this quickly across channels. If I can, I will create a digital help desk to create a more engaging experience for my consumer.

16 - I will solicit input from my peers to establish success metrics and will share these metrics with everyone on a regular basis. This will keep others involved and drive useful input into my own program.

17 - I will create an inner circle! Try your best to engage your best consumers into an inner circle. An interactive dialogue with them will provide effective guidance for your marketing program.

Good luck with your campaigns in 2011. You should strive to converse with your consumers, engaging them in a timely profitable dialogue. After all, marketing is all about creating interactive conversations.

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How to check the maturity of your digital marketing programs

Your email marketing program drives your digital marketing strategy. It can be used effectively to drive true consumer engagement across channels.

The challenge is that many business leaders think that email is a cheap way to communicate and a way to drive a quick buck. So they spend less and beat it to death to drive what they think are 'maximum' results.

There are truly five stages of email 'maturity' (if I may)within organizations.

Stage 1, it is Cheap

Stage 2, it is Quick

Stage 3, it can be Tracked

Stage 4, it can be Personalized

Stage 5, it can speak across channels, Multi-channel

1 – Cheaper than paper – your company does email because direct mail costs are higher and email helps subsidize those costs.

2 – Quick way to communicate – it is a very fast way to get your campaigns out of your door into the prospects inbox.

3 – Track effectiveness of campaigns – you are concerned about measuring success of your other channel campaigns, so you are interested in seeing what is really working effectively.

4 – Personalize your messaging – you want to track what people are doing, place them in segments, and personalize each message uniquely (or strive to) towards recipients.

5 – Ability to leverage information across channels – you are using email as a means to build preference repositories and create a two way dialogue with recipients across channel.

Assign yourself a number for each one of the bullets above – most marketers have moved from two to three and some are beginning to reach stage four. There are very few companies that are in stage five.

Usually, the higher your number; the higher the level of your 'email maturity.'

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Should you be on Twitter? Here are seven reasons why...

Many businesses simply don't know if they should be on Twitter. They know about the buzz and get excited about followers but they are unable to justify whether they should be on Twitter or if they are, they are having some interesting challenges with engagement.

Here are seven simple ways you could use Twitter for your business.

1. Provide updates from your brand. The goal here is to make people aware of things that you have going on. The key is to keep the updates short, and make sure that they are relevant. Don't put traditional press release out via Twitter.

2. Announce special events or promotions. If you are hosting an open house, or you have a special speaker coming in - you can use Twitter to make an announcement to those that follow you. You can also use Twitter if you have a special offer. Crisp, clear, & concise - this is what Twitter feeds can be leveraged into.

3. Offer some basic tips about your product or service. One suggestion is to take some of your frequently asked questions from your site and make them available to those that follow you via Twitter (with a link to the page with more information). They important thing to do here is to use a little intrigue to get the dialogue going - engage with a question and then offer an answer that is relevant.

4. Offering 'deeper' information about your brand. You can use Twitter to schedule a special online event - some have done well by scheduling power hours where people tweet about a particular topic. This is also used effectively while covering real events.

5. Effective on-boarding. Most people who work with your brand may not realize all that you provide. The best way to make them aware is to get to know them better. You can use Twitter as part of an engagement cycle where you can introduce them to the different things you do (set up timed welcome tweets). Additionally, you can use Twitter for consumer surveys and do a little aspirational marketing. Take a look at Live Solid, they have done a good job with 'aspirational engagement.'

6. Get more mileage out of print. Start with something you may just mailed to your list and highlight parts of an interesting article. Refer to something specific within the article and try to engage people with a question online. Once you get the hang of doing this, do this for upcoming mailers. Eventually, look to reduce or stop the distribution of a specific direct mail piece. The ROI gained could help you do more with Twitter.

7. Now, try to be cool. Three simple contests work well here. You could put up a picture and ask people to vote on a caption. You could post a question on Twitter and may the first correct answer win. You could also run a scavenger hunt on Twitter - driving people from one spot to another.

A few things to think about - you can use Twitter for customer service, for FAQ's, to engage people, & yes sometimes be cool. The thing to remember is that you have to be careful about being too cool as you may not be able to sustain it or your brand may not stand up to it. Twitter is also very powerful in getting people engaged on both mobile and the web.

The important thing to remember is not go be an 'Illtwitterate' or a 'Twammer' but 'Twengage' 'Tweeple' with 'Tweets' that 'Twexpound' 'Twisdom.'

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False Advertising: Five Sneaky Subject Lines

I wanted to share five email newsletters with you - these emails include subject lines that I consider deceptive. I am in the business of email marketing and pay special attention to what is sent. I know others have received similar message. I simply do not understand why a brand is willing to risk relationships with bad messaging.

Subject Line: Your news personalized…
Really, I never really did personalize what this news portal offered. In fact, the only reason I set up an account with them was to get a copy of my free birthday horoscope. I never told them about sports, or business, or the type of news. Yet my email had news articles that had nothing to with any of my interest. What was worse was that they didn't even include my horoscope.

Subject Line: We miss your online orders - & we want you back
I received this message from a place that sells food online. While I have signed up to receive their emails, I have never ordered online. What is interesting is that I have ordered from their 'store' but it would be impossible for them to associate the email id with my in-store contact information. When I questioned their store about the email message I was told that they were trying to be 'inclusive' and make everyone part of their 'family.'

Subject Line: People who bought table cloths also bought…
Yes, we did purchase table cloths for our formal dining table. We purchased two different table cloths and the company knows that we have a table that can seat eight. I opened the email in eager anticipation to see what other accessory they were recommending - I expected table mats, chair covers, perhaps table accessories. The body of the email offered us a wide selection of wind chimes! Wind chimes! Were they expecting us to blow the wind chime to get served?

Subject Line: Your subscription is about to expire
Intrigued, I opened the email to read the following copy. We recently mailed (direct mail) you a subscription offer to 'Magazine.' Our great offer to you is about to expire. How can an offer become a subscription? Where did they find my email? And how do I un-subscribe from something I didn't subscribe to?

Subject Line: Welcome to our newsletter
Impossible is what I said. I expressly remember having ordered a graduation gift for a colleague. I had put in my email id for the order confirmation & expressly unchecked the box to receive their email newsletter (full of discount coupons, great deals, & timely information). I was even impressed when I received a confirmation phone call from them about the order. Once again, I was asked and I declined the 'valuable newsletter.'

We need to be quick to get the consumer who signs up on board with our newsletters, but we also need to be careful about what we are sending them. The examples above range from a 'false' sign up to mailing of incorrect offers, or the company making assumptions about them knowing what they think I am interested in.

Isn't this False Adverting?

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12 Simple Steps to Kill a Brand

1. Protect your brand from change like a religious zealot. Your marketing mojo has worked for 100 years, and by golly it'll work for another 100. Convince yourself that all good change is evolutionary; that anything progressing faster than a terodactyl is downright dangerous.

2. Democracy rules. Vote on everything, especially creative work. And vote often. Phil in accounting. Lisa in customer service. Your mom. And, of course, legal. Your marketing will be stripped of anything that could possibly make it work, but an ass covered is an ass saved.

3. Believe your sacred brand lives in a vacuum where it is immune to cultural, technological and demographic changes. Like Women's Suffrage and the Internet, they're all fads anyway.

4. Worry about losing your job. That fear will protect you from taking any action that could positively move your business forward, while you may get lucky and ride the flat growth line into retirement.

5. Wear Teflon by Armani. Let the little guys take the fall. Make your subordinates more afraid of losing their job than you are of losing yours. After all, it's your job to cultivate talent internally.
6. Talk a good game. Drop buzzwords. Maybe Tweet once or twice. Reference articles about social media and forward them to higher ups. Everyone will know you're on top of this new fangled stuff, but don't do anything about it.

7. Congratulate yourself for being at the top of your industry without wondering if your industry will be there in 5 years.

8. Ignore criticism or even the hint of negative karma. Consumers are idiots or difficult cases. Research lies. And your agency's job is to suck up and take orders.

9. Never benchmark or evaluate your program against other industries much less competitors. Those guys are clueless and their ideas have no relevance to an aged and revered brand like yours.

10. Consumers are idiots (see No. 8). Listening to what they think or feel about your brand, or how it could better meet their needs is just stupid. What could possibly come from it? New product ideas. More share. Why bother? Your brand had this nailed 100 years ago.

11. Not listening to your peers. Yes, just because you tweet doesn't make you an expert on Twitter.

12. Not staying open. Check your channels to see that you are open at all times.

Many thanks to Susan @ Ideopia!

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How to design the perfect welcome message

If you had one chance to connect with a consumer - how would you go about it? Would you just send them a generic welcome message and hope that they agree to start reading the rest of your messages or would you try to make the first message special.

Take extra time to design your welcome campaigns.

These welcome campaigns may be years behind your current design work or they could be doing only part of their job. Think of the campaign(s) as your first impression, it’s the best chance you have for the recipient to add you to their safe sender list; your chance to highlight something they may have overlooked while on your site or simply introduce them to your full experience – either through a purchase, survey or social media offerings.

Evaluate these campaigns quarterly (monthly if you can); make sure they are serving your organizations needs:

· Show recipients a sample of what to expect

· Provide them with important information (something that will want them to keep your email for a while)

· Collect information from them – i.e. a simple survey (fill-in from the registration page)

· Push them toward other items – cool or underappreciated part of your site or social media outlets

· Generate sales – this could be your best chance to convert!

· Don't think about just one campaign - plan a series of welcome campaigns (2 - 3) to help your new prospect become part of your family

· Mix it up – drive your campaigns to them through mobile, social, & email.

You need to use this first impression to start a dialogue with your consumers, it is the best way to learn about them, it is the best way to communicate, it is the best way to market - all towards creating interactive conversations.

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Seven things you should do with an abandoned transaction

Most of us know the effectiveness, yet very few follow up on abandoned transactions – even fewer do an adequate job, resulting in fewer conversions and more lost opportunities.

Here are a seven suggestions to help get things going:

1) The Abandoned Cart email needs to go out within 48 hours

2) The email should always have a split test – with and without an offer as incentive to complete the transaction,

3) The email should inquire – Could you tell us why you left the cart? Leverage the information, and update customer’s profile.

4) The email should have a simpler call to action and an expiration date – Dear Customer, All you have to do is click on this link, call or print to take to a store or branch; this offer is valid for (less than five) a few days.

5) Whether you close the transaction or not – update the customer’s preferences with specifics regarding the products or services that they selected.

6) If you have the bandwidth, turn the incomplete transaction over to your customer service team for follow up.

7) Show the customer the value of the offer within your social media channels.

The abandoned cart is a great micro campaign opportunity. You already know the prospect is in the market and you can leverage their specific preferences into a one on one opportunity.

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How to get repeat business from your customers

I had meetings with three organizations; the first was an online retailer that told me that they have very little repeat business despite their vast selection of products. People bought just once and moved on.

Another merchant (catalog, web and B2B store presence) told me that half their hits on search come from existing customers. Yet they continued to increase their search budget. Imagine spending money to find people who you already found!

The third was a bank that gives away $50 to open new accounts, yet only one in 20 of the people opening these accounts actually establish more than one other relationship with the bank.

These numbers are disappointing, but not atypical.

We spend so much money on acquiring new customers, but very little is done to take care of the existing – our focus should start from within, by nurturing existing relationships.

Start with a thank you email that is personal; follow up with a call (even a voicemail will do). The goal is to establish a dialogue to thank the new customer and solicit feedback to improve your process.

After the initial email (and or discussion) put the customer on a recurring campaign to introduce them to your brand; highlight certain parts of your business and make sure that your dialogue is educational. Regularly solicit their feedback on your campaigns.

It might seem like too much work, but keep in mind that if you compare this with the cost of new customer acquisition – it is only a part of the overall cost.

To the first company, I suggest creating an email help desk to call customers, thank them and solicit direct feedback about their experience. Follow this up with two to three campaigns that inquire, educate and introduce recipients to other parts of the business.

To the second company, put the customer on a recurring stream of communiqués – part of your bonding program. Send them a sample, solicit their feedback and keep in touch.

Finally, to the bank, make the recipient tell you more about themselves in exchange for the $50. Then assign a rep to this newly acquired customer – make it their responsibility to stay in touch with them over the first four weeks. The goal should be to make them aware of the services your bank has and see if you can help the new account holder meet their personal goals.

You need to explore every opportunity to continue the conversation with your consumer.

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How to tie in your Catalogue into Email, Mobile, and Social Media

So many cataloguers keep putting out paper communiqués to their direct marketing list without any direct references back to their interactive programs. While there is an occasional reference to "sign up for email," or "join them on Facebook," there is nothing that really drives the consumer to come online.

I worked with a specialty catalogue on an issue that offered more than 50 ideas to spruce up your yard. The catalog was divided into five different sections, each led with a lifestyle-based photo followed by product pictures. The copy detailed highlights, great tips and even testimonials. We even quizzed you and had an answer on the next page.

The lifestyle photo, product pictures, tips, and testimonials were all provided by our subscribers. The expert opinions, and detailed highlights were provided by our product champions.

We showed off our digital assets (email, mobile, & social media) on page two and we had references in the catalogue back to the website encouraging the reader to go find more online – further encouraging sign-up. The entire catalog was peppered with references to additional tips and more detail online. We were also very prudent to mix it up between different social media channels.

Our intent to drive people to different social outlets was two-fold. First, we wanted to make sure that we covered different sites. Second, we wanted to track what pictures, videos, or copy actually drove people to the site.

Our engagement was real and a year later we have almost 80% of our active email list on Facebook!

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Some of the worst Tweets ever!

Here are some interesting examples of Tweets from Twidiots who forget that the web doesn't discriminate (it is hard to hide your personal stuff from corporate stuff), it doesn't forget, and you can have very viral reactions.

From some real people, working at really companies, and proudly wearing their company brand on their pesonal Twitter handle….

1- I really can not think straight. I'm worse off than a goldfish. I need to get tested, this is bad...

2 - too bad the xanax REALLY wants me to close my eyes.

3 - Those 10,000 welts on my arms and legs are not a bunch of bug bites...

Five tweets from a Cataloger selling dog food & accessories -

1 - Join our dog days of summer sale (link….)

2 - Great treats for your furry friends (link….)

3 - Make the dogs happy with our great grooming products (link….)

4 - For your pooch, poodles, & little pets add a little style (link….)

& then the dramatic finish…

5 - Great doggy styles, check out our Facebook page (link….)

No wonder, people get concerned about Facebook.

Two Tweets from a Financial Institution -

1 - Our rates come with a guarantee - lock this in for the next 30 days, 4.9%...

Within five minutes, the rate changed...

2 - We have great loan rates, really low, 5.3%

The real reason this happened is because two people were tweeting from the same handle without talking to each other. Tweeps!

Three tweets from another Financial Institution -

1 - Learn more about money, demystify your finances, get approved on the first attempt, keep your credit scores high, keep your loan rates lower (140 characters…)

2 - Join us on Thursday March 11, at our Newberry location from 4.00 pm to 6.00 pm for education, fun, & low interest loans to get what you want (140 characters…)

3 - Call Megan at xxx-xxx-xxxx, ext xxx to sign up for this special event, please do not reply to this message as this mail box is not monitored (140 characters…)

So I called Megan, even though I was upset I couldn’t tweet back an RSVP. She had no idea about the workshop, and put me on hold, I waited five minutes, my call got dropped, so I called back - got her voicemail, and never got a call back from this FI. Not sure what happened, but a classic case of left hand not knowing what right hand was doing.

I tweeted back to the FI handle, that wasn't responded to either.

From someone who applied for a job -

I asked her if she knew about Twitter. She said she did, shared her Twitter handle with me during the interview. We pulled it up, this was one of her most current tweets.

I make mistakes, speak without thinking, act without knowing, drink so much I can barely walk. I'm a fantastic lover though, & good friend..

She nonchalantly replied, 'I'm honest too!'

To be successful on Twitter you have to engage. You also have to be prudent and careful. The web doesn't offer you an eraser, and you have to learn how to walk a fine line between your personal and business tweets. If you have other fun tweets you would like to share, please post them.

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Read this before you survey your consumers

Be careful how you ask questions of your recipients, your tone is particularly important because if you imply that you are soliciting opinion to change things, you must be prepared to do so. Here are some potential pitfalls and ways to avoid them. Simply said here are a few ideas that are a better way to ask questions.

You could be asked to do things that you are simply not prepared to incorporate, for example if you ask the consumer if they want more or fewer messages their likely answer is going to be less. Circumvent by telling them you send x-number messages each month, and you’d like to know how many of those messages they read. This accomplishes two things, first you are telling the consumer that you have an important message and secondly you’re asking them to pay attention to at least some of them.

You could also get varying opinions about what would be best for your email communiqués; each may be a great suggestion but you may not have the resources to come up with that many versions of creative. A better way would be to ask people about the types of things they would like to see in your emails, then attempt to feature as many of these items in future campaigns.

Never forget the importance the text box plays in a survey, make sure it is prominently placed and that you are inviting the recipient to share colloquial feedback with you. Many people love to chat about themselves and their interests; the text box is an open invitation that allows you to gather feedback and segment. What is even better is to incorporate this feedback into your social media channels. Encourage the recipient to share this with their friends, or ask them if you could share it with the rest of your recipients.

Share your survey with a small group just before you deploy, include your team, others in your company and try to get an end-user’s perspective (i.e. first responders club.) Incorporate their feedback before you make the survey available to all recipients.

Remember, your survey should be conversational; never forget they are two-way communiqués and that a good marketing program is all about Creating Interactive Conversations.

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Avoid Customer Service Issues through Effective Systems Integration

Consumers complain that while brands work really hard to win them over, the same brands struggle with taking care of customer service issues.

One of the biggest challenges with customer service has to do with the lack of integration amongst systems. It takes so much time to go over the “issue” again and again with different people before the right person can resolve it.

By contrast, I was pleasantly surprised when I made a call at lunch to enroll in a special incentive program. I initially tried to enroll online, but kept getting an error. So I waited two days, and reluctantly called into the customer service department expecting a hassle.

I was completely wrong, the agent I spoke to addressed me by name (I had entered my account number) and knew that I had tried to enroll. He helped with my selections and even provided information that wasn’t given in my original notice.

So what makes this experience so different? CONNECTIVITY – knowing that your customers or prospects have logged in, attempted to access your product or service and then helping them correct the issue.

So I ask, at what point in the bell curve does the cost or time of updating or integrating your multiple channels offset the attrition of customer dissatisfaction?

Do think about customer service as a key component of your engagement strategy. Also, by allowing your business to access important information about your consumers - you will look smarter in serving them well.

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You Need to Consolidate Your Email and Mobile Programs

In most organizations you have separate initiatives for email and mobile. Plus it is rare to find these digital marketing initiatives tied directly to traditional marketing programs. Most people look at email and mobile as a cost benefit program because it is cheaper to execute than other direct marketing programs.

What makes things myopic is that marketers measure these programs with a time to redemption clause - 'you can get things done quickly.' Very few organizations are beginning to invest in email and mobile to build branding across channel.

While marketers like that you can track both these channels, they tend to track things separately. As a consumer you may get an email offer and a mobile offer. Both offers are tracked, but there is little coordination between what was offered across channels, and worse, almost no leveraging of one channel response into the other.

In an ideal state email and mobile should not be looked at as an email program & a mobile program; but rather think of them as a consumer marketing program. The consumer comes to you because you provide value. This value could be information, products, services, or special deals. Your focus should be on engagement and how the offers can be simplified as they are served up to the consumer.

Marketers should make it very easy for the consumer to communicate back with them. They need to leverage the consumers feedback into how the consumer can be approached on the "other channels." The more the user is engaged, the more feedback they provide - the more interesting your content can get.

Are you leveraging user generated content into your mobile & email mix?

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A Simple and Effective Way to Launch a Loyalty Program

As consumers we can appreciate the extra attention, or shorter lines, or the loyalty points that add up. Businesses too, would really like to keep the consumer from going elsewhere and would like to leverage previous transactions to provide better service.

Maybe your business is ready for a loyalty marketing program – here is a checklist to start things off, even if you do not have a big budget:

1) Survey – Ask them what is important, what they like and dislike; ask them what you can do to improve things and what will make them come back. Ask them how they would like to be rewarded. Use this online survey to convey the importance of the channel and set the precedent of how you will be communicating with them.

2) Reward them with Points – If they complete a transaction, verify the information, send feedback or make a purchase, give them some recognition. These points add up and result in a snowball effect, making your customers pay more attention.

3) Send Updates – Include their points balance and remind them of the point hierarchy… you're only X points away from the next level. Keep thanking them for the business – on your website, via email, through your call center or in-store representatives.

4) Help them with Redemption – Whether it’s a percentage off, merchandise or upgrades make the process easy, make the customer feel their points are worth something.

5) Give the Intangibles – Have a special line for loyal or elite customers, send thank you cards from the owner... mix it up across channels, this shows the customer that they are part of the family.

Loyalty marketing is true one-to-one interaction – you start by knowing your consumer and only then serving them better.

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How can people get away with such tweets?

I simply do not understand how and why some people can get away by tweeting such trash. Here are seven tweets - one after the other from a self proclaimed social twexpert.

Tweet 1 - 'Am on this conference call from hell, I hope they don't hear me snore!'

Tweet 2 - 'We (name of major corporation) are looking for a product manager, here is the (link to job).'

Tweet 3 - 'I could spend my whole day watching videos on youtube.'

Tweet 4 - 'Throw out your pen, our software allows you to sign with your digital id.'

Tweet 5 - 'Can anyone help me justify a trip to New York!'

Tweet 6 - 'Watched all three videos, cannot decide who should win...'

Tweet 7 - 'Home from work, did nothing, but I do have a really bad headache...

Oh, and to add a disclaimer. The handle does say that "views expressed here are my own."

How can people get away with this stuff?

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A Five Step Mantra to Convert Prospects into Fans

Here is a five-step process for brands to convert their prospects into buyers. The next step is to get the consumer to purchase again, eventually converting the consumers into an ardent fan.

1. Make a connection - Target people with their preferences. If they have not provided you with preferences, then give them options via an email, social media, or a direct mail piece. Watch what they prefer, and add that to their preferences. Use this information to create targeted offers for them.

2. Try to create a memory - Make sure that your copy and image are interesting enough for the recipient to remember what they were looking at. Also, make the call to action stand out. In an ideal situation the recipient will click through to purchase. If not, coax them to review your offer or even perhaps add the offer to their shopping basket which you can store for them.

3. Provide a trigger - Let people purchase a tangible asset from you. Even if this is a small purchase, it is a foot in the door. Solicit their feedback, their opinion, and seek additional preferences. So even if you don't get the sale or connection, try to get them to engage with you a little more.

4. Follow up with more - Use the information provided to create a second order. Do this within 45 days and you will be well on your path to moving the one time buyer into a repeat buyer. Leverage this information to thank them and make them another offer within a 30 day period.

5. Keep score - Look at your results in real time. Test out offers, headlines, & prices. Listen to the buzz on social media channels. Keep an eye on your numbers and use this to come up with dynamic offers.

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