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?

If you are an email marketer you might have started to believe in destiny. With ISPs headstrong to tighten their policies for bulk senders, rubbing the good ol crystal ball and hoping for the best might seem like a good option. We don’t know much about crystal balls but can sure share some good practices that can help you control the destiny of your email communication.

Gmail has listed a set of guidelines and best practices for Email Marketers, when followed should yield favorable results.

Guidelines for Email Marketers

“The way Gmail classifies spam depends heavily on reports from our users. Gmail users can mark and unmark any message as spam, at any time. To increase the inbox delivery rate of your messages, make sure that all recipients on your distribution lists actually want to receive the mail.” – GMAIL

Presuming you do everything by the book i.e. ensure users opt-in to receive your messages, honor un-subscription, follow the best practices for HTML design, monitor bounces, and ensure your subscribers engage with you and so on; you should not need a crystal ball (or Aladdin’s lamp for that matter). That being said, you can request your faithful subscribers to white-list you!

Being white-listed by subscribers ensures:

1. Your mails almost always lands in their in-boxes.

2. Your reputation with ISPs is significantly improved, so consequently your deliverability improves even for the subscribers who have not white-listed you.

We have listed a set of step by step instructions that you can email to your subscribers and request them to white-list you:

White-Listing Instructions

To ensure the success of this exercise you may consider offering incentives!

To learn more feel free to get in touch.

Geetika@kenscio.com

India Ranks 3rd after China and US with 121 million users according to a article in The Economics Times.  By the end of 2011, one in every 10 Indians will be an internet user, making the country with 1.2 billion population, the third largest internet market in the world after China and the United States.

India is adding internet users at the rate of 5 to 7 million users a month and at the current pace, will surpass the US, which has 245 million users in less than two years.

The profile of users is showing the internet is making deep inroads into small towns and among the less affluent.  There are now more internet users in towns with a population of less than 500,000 than in the top eight metros put together.

The internet explosion is rapidly opening up markets for online businesses, consumers and retailers.

Email is the top most activity of Urban internet users followed by Social Network and Education.  Music, etc. is the top most activity of Music Nets Rural Users, followed by Email and General info.

Here is an infographic of the Indian Internet users.