Online E-mailing Strategies

As the end of the first quarter draws near, it's time to review your e-mail efforts to determine if you're still on the road to success. Though sales and response rates are key indicators to how well your program is performing, there are 12 critical areas where you can rate your program's effectiveness to forecast how well you can expect the rest of the year to go. The questions were initially proposed "These questions represent categories that are core areas for analysis with our clients' e-mail marketing programs,"

Will your e-mail efforts succeed in 2007? Find out by answering these questions for your organization's programs, then answer them for your top two competitors. Comparing results will offer some clear direction of how the rest of 2007 should be managed.
E-mailing Strategies Online - The E-Mail Marketing...

E-Mail Marketing Success Forecast :
How simple is it to access your opt-in environment? Is your subscription link buried on your Web site?

How well does the opt-in process explain all the communication types available and establish relevance?

Does your opt-in process decrease attrition by providing examples of the content people will receive if they sign up?

Is there a place where potential subscribers can see samples or access live versions of prior e-mail content (old newsletter versions, etc.)?

E-mailing Strategies Online - Is the registration...
Is the registration process labor intensive? (If e-mail isn't one of the first four requested fields, you run the risk of losing up to 50 percent of interested parties.)

Creative and content:
Does your subject line advise the e-mail's purpose and the offer?

Is the copy format readable under all e-mail circumstance? Does it render well on a mobile device or BlackBerry? Are the text versions actually designed?

Is the message visually optimized? For example, are images strategically placed to move the eye toward the call to action?

Does the e-mail's layout support the brand? Does it carry a consistent brand message through the entire user flow?
Do you have an established cadence that's clearly communicated to the readers (e.g., a monthly newsletter or seasonal update)?

Do you have a third-party list rental strategy? For example, are you renting lists your competitors just used? Do your offers under-perform compared to your competitors'?

Do your programs have triggers built into them? Meaning, when someone opts in, does she receive a welcome e-mail? When she downloads a white paper, does she get a follow-up e-mail to verify receipt and take advantage of a cross- or up-sell opportunity?

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ROI (Return on investment)

Return on investment (ROI) is a financial ratio that compares the amount of income derived from an investment with the cost of the investment. ROI is known as a profitability ratio, because it provides information about management's performance in using the resources of the small business to generate income. ROI and other financial ratios can provide small business owners and managers with a valuable tool to measure their progress against predetermined internal goals, a certain competitor, or the overall industry. ROI is also used by bankers, investors, and business analysts to assess a company's use of resources and financial strength.To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

ROI= (gain From Investment-Cost of Investment)/Cost of Investment

Return on investment is a very popular metric because of its versatility and simplicity. That is, if an investment does not have have a positive ROI, or if there are other opportunities with a higher ROI, then the investment should be not be undertaken. read more…

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WalMart

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is an American public corporation, and is currently the world's largest retailer and the largest corporation. It was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. It is the largest private employer in the United States (US) and Mexico. Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States, with an estimated 20% of the retail grocery and consumables business, and the largest toy seller in the United States, with an estimated 45% of the retail toy business, having surpassed Toys "R" Us in the late 1990s As of April 12, 2007, net sales for the nine-week period ending April 6, 2007 was $61.049 billion, up 10.1% from the previous year's results. read more…

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Earn money online

There are lots of ways to earn money on the internet, but one of the most common and lucrative ways to earn money online is to promote products for companies which have profit sharing programs. Marketing products and services on the internet is known as "Internet Marketing", and is a multi billion dollar industry. Thousands of everyday people, who are just like you and me, are earning money on the internet every day by forming partnerships with companies, which pay commissions based on internet sales they help generate.

Forming these partnerships may sound dificult, but this really isn't the case because many companies have "Affiliate Programs", which are set up for their affiliates. Thre are literally thousands of companies online you can partner with, and start promoting their products literally within minutes. read more…..

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Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management is an integrated information system that is used to plan, schedule and control the presales and postsales activities in an organization. CRM embraces all aspects of dealing with prospects and customers, including the call center, sales force, marketing, technical support and field service. The primary goal of CRM is to improve long-term growth and profitability through a better understanding of customer behavior. CRM aims to provide more effective feedback and improved integration to better gauge the return on investment (ROI) in these areas.

Architecture of CRM

Operational CRM
Operational CRM means supporting the so-called front office business processes, which include customer contact. Tasks resulting from these processes are forwarded to employees responsible, information necessary for carrying out the tasks and interfaces to back-end applications are being provided and activities with customers are being documented for further reference.

Analytical CRM
In analytical CRM, data gathered within operational CRM are analyzed to segment customers or to identify cross- and up-selling potential. Data collection and analysis is viewed as a continuing and iterative process. Ideally, business decisions are refined over time, based on feedback from earlier analysis and decisions.

Collaborative CRM
Collaborative CRM facilitates interactions with customers through all channels (personal, letter, fax, phone, web, e-mail) and supports co-ordination of employee teams and channels. It is a solution that brings people, processes and data together so companies can better serve and retain their customers. The data/activities can be structured, unstructured, conversational, and/or transactional in nature.

Benefits of CRM:
Practicing CRM requires an efficient and integrated internal business system. Many businesses benefit from the organizational discipline CRM imposes, as well as from the technology itself. CRM will help your business if you view it as a set of tools that let you do more for, and get more from, your customer.
• Develop better communication channels
• Collect vital data, like customer details and order histories
• Create detailed profiles such as customer preferences
• Deliver instant, company-wide access to customer histories
• Identify new selling opportunities

CRM for Organization:
The ultimate purpose of CRM, like any organizational initiative, is to increase profit. In the case of CRM this is achieved mainly by providing a better service to your customers than your competitors. CRM not only improves the service to customers though; a good CRM capability will also reduce costs, wastage, and complaints. Effective CRM also reduces staff stress, because attrition - a major cause of stress - reduces as services and relationships improve. CRM enables instant market research as well: opening the lines of communications with your customers gives you direct constant market reaction to your products, services and performance, far better than any market survey. Good CRM also helps you grow your business.

Customer’s needs are distinctly different to and far broader than a product or service, and the features and benefits encompassed. Customers' needs generally extend to issues far beyond the suppliers proposition, and will often include the buying-selling process (prior to providing anything), the way that communications are handled, and the nature of the customer-supplier relationship: customers stay with you longer; customer churn rates reduce; referrals to new customers increase from increasing numbers of satisfied customers; demand reduces on fire-fighting and trouble-shooting staff, and overall the organization's service flows and teams work more efficiently and more happily.

What do customers want?
Modern CRM theory refers to the idea of 'integrating the customer'. This new way of looking at the business involves integrating the customer into all aspects of the supplier's business, and vice versa. This implies a relationship that is deeper and wider than the traditional 'arms-length' supplier-customer relationship.

The traditional approach to customer relationships was based on a simple transaction or trade, and little more. Perhaps there would be only a single point of contact between one person on each side. All communication and dealings would be between these two people, even if the customers' organization contained many staff, departments, and functional requirements.

The modern approach to customer relationship management is based on satisfying all of the needs - people, systems, processes, etc - across the customer's organization, such as might be affected and benefited by the particular supply.

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Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to maintain and enhance customer relationships and deliver a measurable return on your marketing dollar, especially when you choose an email marketing service provider with the experience, ISP relationships, and product capabilities to effectively execute email campaigns, deliver your email, and measure your results.

Direct E-mail Marketing is the fastest option for sales. Email is so versatile and relatively simple to organize, as long as your data base is in good shape. A typical email campaign will deliver responses within 48 hours. This is the fastest media to generate new business avenues & push the sale.

Email Marketing is probably one of the effective way to attract new customers by keeping touch with existing ones and minimizing operating cost. E-mail Marketing campaign includes features like creating relevant data base for your target market by internet search, writing effective mail message to increase response rate & sending mails at one-to-one bases not in bulk mail style. The most recent surveys and our own experience show that Email Marketing is an integral part of a companys’ marketing activities.

Advantage of E-mail Marketing:
• Email allows you to build customer and reseller loyalty, acquire new customers, do sales support actions, cross sell and up sell.
• Email has a Return on Investment (ROI) higher than any other media (press, television, radio, direct marketing), according to the Direct Marketing Association research.
• Email allows you to monitor the email delivery result in real time, knowing the number of recipients and who opened the message and clicked its links.
• Email reaches approx.90% of the final result within 3 working days of the delivery, with a peak during the first hours of the first day for those who run Email Marketing actions at regular intervals.
• Email is easy to use.
• Email is fast; a study by Inverse Network Technology shows that 91% of email messages get to their final destination in 5 minutes, 5% in 30 minutes, 1% in 60 minutes and 3% in 12 hours.
• Email has an excellent cost/performance ratio.
• Email is reliable. The above mentioned study shows that in 95% of cases the users' access the Internet Providers services, to send and receive email messages, without the need to try a second time.
• Email it allows you to quickly and easily identify undeliverable addresses and, therefore, to find a solution.

Disadvantage of E-mail Marketing:
• Many companies use e-mail marketing to communicate with existing customers, but many other companies send unsolicited bulk e-mail, also known as spam.

• Illicit e-mail marketing antedates legitimate e-mail marketing, since on the early Internet it was not permitted to use the medium for commercial purposes. As a result, marketers attempting to establish themselves as legitimate businesses in e-mail marketing have had an uphill battle, hampered also by criminal spam operations billing themselves as legitimate.

• It is frequently difficult for observers to distinguish between legitimate and spam e-mail marketing. First off, spammers attempt to represent themselves as legitimate operators, obfuscating the issue. Second, direct-marketing political groups such as the U.S. Direct Marketing Association (DMA) have pressured legislatures to legalize activities which many Internet operators consider to be spamming, such as the sending of "opt-out" unsolicited commercial e-mail. Third, the sheer volume of spam e-mail has led some users to mistake legitimate commercial e-mail for spam especially when the two have a similar appearance, as when messages include HTML and flashy graphics.

• Due to the volume of spam e-mail on the Internet, spam filters are essential to most users. Some marketers report that legitimate commercial e-mails frequently get caught by filters, and hidden; however, it is somewhat less common for e-mail users to complain that spam filters block legitimate mail.

• Companies considering an e-mail marketing program must make sure that their program does not violate spam laws such as the United States' CAN-SPAM Act, the European Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 or their Internet provider's acceptable use policy. Even if a company follows the law, if Internet mail administrators find that it is sending spam it is likely to be listed in blacklists such as SPEWS.

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Six Sigma and Its Benefits

Six Sigma is a business improvement methodology, originally developed by Motorola to systematically improve processes by eliminating defects. Defects are defined as units that are not members of the intended population. The objective of Six Sigma is to deliver high performance, reliability, and value to the end customer. Since it was originally developed, Six Sigma has enjoyed wide popularity as an important element of many Total Quality Management (TQM) initiatives.

Methodologies:
Six Sigma has two key methodologies: DMAIC and DMADV. DMAIC is used to improve an existing business process. DMADV is used to create new product designs or process designs in such a way that it results in a more predictable, mature and defect free performance.

DMAIC:
Basic methodology consists of the following five steps:

• Define the process improvement goals that are consistent with customer demands and enterprise strategy.

• Measure the current process and collect relevant data for future comparison.

• Analyze to verify relationship and causality of factors. Determine what the relationship is, and attempt to ensure that all factors have been considered.

• Improve or optimize the process based upon the analysis using techniques like Design of Experiments.

• Control to ensure that any variances are corrected before they result in defects. Set up pilot runs to establish process capability, transition to production and thereafter continuously measure the process and institute control mechanisms.

DMADV:
Basic methodology consists of the following five steps:

• Define the goals of the design activity that are consistent with customer demands and enterprise strategy.

• Measure and identify CTQs (critical to qualities), product capabilities, production process capability, and risk assessments.

• Analyze to develop and design alternatives, create high-level design and evaluate design capability to select the best design.

• Design details, optimize the design, and plan for design verification. This phase may require simulations.

• Verify the design, set up pilot runs, implement production process and handover to process owners.

Benefits of Six Sigma:
Those organisations that implement Six Sigma correctly achieve significant benefits that contribute to competitive advantage and to changing the culture in an organisation from reactive problem solving to proactive problem prevention. Specifically the proven benefits include:

Benefits For the organization:
• Bottom line cost savings (5%-20% of turnover per annum)
• Improved quality of product or service as perceived by the customer (internal and external customers)
• Reduction in process cycle times
• Development of staff skills
• Common language throughout the organization
• World class standard

Benefits For the individual:
• Improved knowledge and skills
• Ability to use a wide range of tools and techniques
• A status that is recognised world wide

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Knowledge Process Outsourcing

Knowledge Process Outsourcing is highly value added processes in which the achievement of goals is highly dependent on the skills, knowledge and experience of the people carrying them out. Knowledge Process Outsourcing deals with executing standardized processes, involves higher-end services which require advanced analytical and technical skills, knowledge process outsourcing involves legal works carried out at law firms like patent document writing, global filing, search, trademark search, trademark registration, prior art searches, legal advise on infringements, invalidation search, freedom of use search, etc.

Areas with significant potential for Knowledge Process Outsourcing includes pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, data search, integration and management services, financial services, research and analytics, technology research, computer-aided simulation and engineering design and professional services, such as business research and legal services. Offshoring research and development in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology also holds great potential for Knowledge Process Outsourcing.

Knowledge Process Outsourcing is not an extension of BPO as the premise of a Knowledge Process Outsourcing is to include it into a global delivery team, the requisite skills that support an organization’s core processes. While Knowledge Process Outsourcing is driven by the depth of knowledge, experience and judgment; BPOs in contrast are more about size, volume and efficiency, the report states.

Benefits of KPO
Standardized technical education is now widely available to all in the developing countries. This trained manpower is also accessible at very low cost as well. It therefore makes sense to utilize their services.
Outsourcing to KPO firms can provide the following benefits:
• Valuable cost savings that can be utilized elsewhere.
• Standard operational efficiency.
• Trained professionals at work.
• Savings in time and management energy for maintaining in house services.
• Increase in profits.
• Option to recruit a larger work force without raising costs.

KPO Skills Defined
The following skills form the basis of knowledge-based firms and their workforce. Analyzing data and information to produce meaningful documents.
• Researching information from various sources.
• Converting raw technical data into presentable documents.
• Use of high levels of conceptualization and theoretical knowledge.
• Proficiency with various advanced software and hardware devices.
• Maintaining workflow, meeting deadlines, and applying quality controls.

The KPO Revolution!
The use of skill and knowledge in the Knowledge Process Outsourcing industry directly transforms into higher pay scales. Providing an incentive to work and chances to recognize true potential and skill, the KPO industry has taken long strides into becoming one of the leading business opportunity suppliers. Surveys reveal that the KPO industry is here to stay and grow.

By 2010 the Knowledge Process Outsourcing industry is likely to reach $18 billion and India will receive a whopping 70% of that growth opportunity. With its limitless opportunities for use in any and all industries available, Knowledge Process Outsourcing in India has now opened the door to innumerable avenues. The world is soon to witness the KPO Revolution and companies must now decide whether to join or be left behind.

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