With these opportunities come the risks of damaging customer relationships through confusing or excessive communication, damaging the brand through conflicting messages and experiences across the company, legal liability from inadequate permission or privacy standards, and direct and indirect competitive pressure from other companies that are using email effectively and establishing increasingly higher expectations as to how email should be used in the stream of commerce.
OTOi has developed a robust and comprehensive email marketing offering for our clients that focuses on helping them embrace email as both an acquisition and retention tool grounded on best practices. Our services center on Corporate Email Enablement & Management and 3rd Party Email List Acquisition and Campaign Management. We also work closely with OTOlabs in the deployment of ionMX, an industry leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) email platform focused on optimum email delivery, management, measurement and optimization.
Corporate Email Enablement & Management
While it is true that most organizations have established basic privacy and opt-out policies, most still have not taken full charge of the channel at the enterprise level. This lack of oversight has resulted in corporations operating without controls or policies in place to govern how email, as it relates to marketing, is handled. The absence of a viable framework further contributes to poor targeting (relevancy) and over-communication (frequency). These are the two issues most likely to make customers opt-out of email relationships or simply delete the message altogether. One to One has a proven approach to help corporate marketers establish the necessary platform to manage email marketing efforts across the enterprise. Activities Include:
- Development and facilitation of stakeholder workshops (IT, Sales, Marketing, C-Suite, New Business, Customer Service, Clients, Partners)
- Audit of current email marketing programs against current privacy policies and CAN-SPAM compliance
- Audit of data infrastructure, including analysis of corporate data security models, location of customer opt-in profiles, etc.
- Standardization of corporate opt-in and opt-out processes
- Identification of opt-in content categories (i.e., Advertisements and Promotions, Product Information, Site/Product Announcements,
- Newsletters, Customer Care, Surveys)
- Email creative format and standards development
- Transmission vendor evaluation and campaign management
- Email calendar development
- List management
- Email campaign measurement and analysis
3rd Party Email List Acquisition and Campaign Management
Many e-mail lists are available for rent, but the questionable origin, quality and permission status of the lists makes email prospecting a potentially risky business. One to One’s 3rd party email list identification and procurement process ensures that our clients engage with vendors that meet only proven email best practices. This includes strict verification of opt-in procedures, vendor segmentation by 3rd party privacy certifications, and processes that allow for comprehensive yet direct list management (such as a straightforward way to opt-out of future offers and confirmation that appropriate processes are in place to honor opt-out requests immediately). Activities include:
- Identifying appropriate list selects based on campaign objectives
- Qualifying the permission status of the 3rd party list (opt-in, double opt-in, or triple opt-in)
- Audit of how selected list brokers are managing list permission policies
- Audit of opt-out procedures & rates
- Audit of list cleansing procedures
- Qualifying frequency of list rental
- Documenting historical response rates
- Ensuring CAN-SPAM Compliance
- Identification of suppression services to de-dup the client list against the purchased list prior to sending
- List procurement
- Campaign Management