Subscribers come in all shapes and sizes, however, its not how they look and weigh that is important; but how they behave and interact (with you, the marketer). And it is in this respect that subscribers are very much like volcanoes.

Like volcanoes, subscribers can also be classified as: Erupting, Active, Dormant, and Extinct.

Erupting volcanoes burst with activity and are vital for life and earth’s ecology. Similarly, such subscribers are very important for the success of your email marketing campaigns. They engage, convert and respond to you with least effort.

Active volcanoes have great potential to erupt. Similarly, subscribers who seem calm but have been full of activity in the recent past can easily be re-ignited with the right communication and targeted content.

Dormant volcanoes are volcanoes that used to be active but haven’t shown any signs of activity in the recent past. Such subscribers are like a Question Mark, your efforts should be focused at trying not to lose them. With careful communication and re-engagement strategies you should be able to win some back.

Extinct volcanoes have no history of eruption in considerable past and are not expected to erupt in comparable time scale of future. Subscribers that fall under this category, unfortunately only add cosmetic value to your database (Size!). They are cost heads that hardly provide any return and worse; they can even affect your sender reputation and deliverability.

Identifying such segments is the first step towards defining your communication strategy for your subscribers. By classifying subscribers into appropriate buckets you’ll be able to channel your efforts to:

- Ensure Erupting subscribers stay Erupting

- Push Active subscribers to move to the Erupting state

- Convert the Dormant subscribers to become Active and consequently Erupting

- With careful and infrequent communication identify how many Extinct might still be Dormant.

On paper this approach looks simple and elegant, but how do we ensure that at a given time of day we have the most updated information on these segments? In other words, your subscribers will keep jumping from one category to another, how do we ensure that every jump is recorded and tagged in real time?

Well, we have a super awesome magic potion just for this very purpose, get in touch and one of our wizards will fix this up for you in no time.

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday just departing on the horizon, they mark the beginning of the Christmas shopping season in the west. However, in India this coincidentally lines up with the auspicious wedding dates.

While gold traders look forward to this time with childish glee, smart marketers plan and strategise to get their share of the festive action!

If you haven’t yet started, your first step is to define what you want out of the festive season?

Whether it is increasing order sizes, acquiring more customers, or turning the non transacting subscribers into customers; now is the time for you to plan to achieve your goals and deliver a strong finish to the year end.

Let us look at some of the possible goals you might pursue (among other things):

1. Sell to more of your prospects (increase conversion rates)

2. Sell more to your existing customers (increase order size)

3. Get more subscribers you can market to (Increase your list size)

4. Maximise the opportunity to talk to your customers as they shop

Whatever it is that your heart (or shareholders) desires; Kenscio is here to help you achieve that. So why not get in touch and ask for your free copy of our Christmas / 2012 year end marketing tips and tricks?

Nothing is permanent except change.

– Heraclitus (Greek Philosopher)           

People change and so do their interests, habits, hobbies etc. Hence, it’s safe to assume that your email subscribers will change. The question is whether you can adapt to this change.

Acknowledging this change doesn’t require you to revamp your email strategy every time your subscribers profile changes, instead it requires your email program to be flexible enough to let them choose what is right for them.

Research shows that subscribers (customers) will choose to maintain a deeper and long lasting relationship with you, when they are given the power of choice.

Furthermore, enabling subscribers to make choices makes them feel that they are in control and that they have the ability to dictate what and when they wish to hear from you. This increases the likelihood that they’ll look forward to your email messages and increases the chances that they’ll respond.

This is the power of preferences.

What are Preferences?

Preferences are what that differentiates your subscribers. These are information about your subscribers that allow you to tailor your communication to suit their needs. For example, some might eagerly look forward to a daily promotional mailer, where as other might find these annoying. Similarly, you may have various product or service to offer and your subscribers will prefer some over others.

Customer Preferences

What is an Email Preference Center?

An Email Preference Center allows your recipients to easily change their subscription details. This might include content type, frequency, interests in various offerings, ability to opt down or opt out etc.

Hidden Potential?

Preference Center gives you a means to know more about your subscribers. In addition to the basic information that is captured at the time of sign up, your preference center enables you to collect important information that will help improve and nurture your relationship with your subscribers.

Furthermore, marketers who use preference centers are more successful at retaining un-subscribers than the ones who don’t…

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

Get in touch to obtain your copy of the complete whitepaper on Email Preference Center or speak to one of our consultants today to see how you can improve your email marketing programs with the power of Preference Center.

Position:  Marketing Communications Specialist

Education: A minimum of bachelor’s degree in Public Relations, Marketing, Advertising or communications

Experience: 2 – 3 Years

Role Overview: We are looking for a Marketing Communications Specialist in Bangalore, who will work closely with and be an integral part of external communication function at Kenscio.  The role involves execution of marketing campaigns and programs. The person should have the intellectual rigour and flair to make complex and technical subject matter understandable and compelling to the audience they are aimed at.

Skills: The person must be highly organized and creative and must possess advanced communication and writing skills. In addition, the person must have a fair understanding of the Internet industry and Digital Marketing. Lastly, the Marketing Communications Specialist must be proficient with Microsoft Office tools and other desktop publishing software.

Key Responsibilities:

§  Some experience in external communication at a technology company targeting B2B customers.

§  Proven experience of working on external communication campaigns that support business objectives and produce measurable improvements in business performance

§  Ability to successfully work on simultaneous  projects with excellent time management skills

§  Prepare Case Studies, Whitepapers and Industry Reports

§  Manage the Kenscio Newsletter, and continuously make efforts to make it exciting and engaging for target audience

§  IT Literacy and basic understanding of Digital Marketing is a must

- Email : hr@kenscio.com

- Phone : 080-42042734

I like surveys, more than surveys I like to share my opinion.

The other day I came across an email asking me to fill in a questionnaire. As I read through the mail, I reached the footer that opened with “Please do not reply to this email”. This completely put me off.

Email marketers fight for a very competitive inbox space. Even with the most engaged email list; email marketer can hardly think of obtaining 100% subscribers attention all the time. In other words emails sent to even  engaged subscribers are often left unread.

When email marketing is referred to as Interactive digital marketing, It beats me why some email marketers would cut interactions with their subscribers with a do not reply message. If anything they should encourage people to reply. This is valuable feedback and the best part is; it comes for free!

Some people might counter this with arguments on scale of mails sent, lack of resources, etc. Email communication is not a one way mass communication. It is a direct digital communication that needs to be interactive in nature.  I don’t think there is any excuse valid enough for trying to ignore replies.

Incoming mails can be easily filtered and sorted by mail clients. Furthermore, ticketing systems can scan messages and even automatically respond to general queries or redirect people to a FAQ section. If it is a long reply and cannot be automatically responded to, may be it is worthwhile to have it read by a person! The interactivity could be made even simple by letting the subscribers answer to a set of choices, which makes the marketers job simple to find the trends of their subscribers.

A two way interaction / conversation ensures an on going dialogue and an on going dialogue ensures sustainable success of email marketing campaigns.

Do not reply message and donotreply@ email addresses suggest you don’t really care about your subscribers and that your communication flows one way. Such marketers usually end up with unengaged subscribers, or worse subscribers put an end to their subscription.

Grey matter is brooding at Kenscio as it gears up for 2012. Kenscio today released their updated website (www.kenscio.com). Compared to the previous and relatively simpler version; the latest website covers almost the full spectrum of services and capabilities of Kenscio. The company exhibits its true strengths as a Digital Direct Marketing solutions and services provider; through its cutting edge technological capabilities, arsenal of flexible integration and automation options, & more importantly its consulting and strategy solutions to help enterprises make the most out of their email marketing efforts.

Kenscio.com also talks about its unique list hygiene tool that is capable of running a variety of checks to verify the authenticity of email lists. What’s more, there are talks about a unique set of services for enterprises to help efficiently manage their social media marketing efforts.

At Kenscio this is the onset of lot more positive changes to come in future. These will be continuos efforts that will manifest as their efforts towards becoming: the most customer centric digital direct marketing solutions & services provider for Enterprises in India, and soon abroad.

So why not pay a visit and share what you feel?

www.kenscio.com

What is the worth of an email address?

The value of an email address is Zero. Why? Read on.

Email marketers often speculate the value of an email address. You might hear compelling numbers backed by sober theories. Good email marketers spend time and money on acquiring an email address, where as not so good email marketers purchase email addresses from spammers at probably one fourth the cost (of genuinely acquiring an email address).

In addition there is revenue, conversions, ROI that email marketer’s measure against their email marketing efforts, all this should amount to something right?

Well it does, the value or the worth lies in the relationship and not the email address. You have a relationship with the person who owns that email address and not with the mere email address itself.

Why I’m highlighting this is because you can’t have a relationship with someone you do not know. So if you only have an email address your like a blindfolded chap in a dark room trying to have a conversation with an imaginary person. A real conversion requires engagement. Engagement requires you to know your subscribers, ask questions, find their opinions etc. Most importantly, engagement requires “two way conversation”, which cannot be initiated with just an email address.

An engaged subscriber is a valued subscriber. No engagement means zero value.