Customer retention remains one of the toughest tasks in online business activity. The vicious circle of attracting a visitor, converting him/her into a customer and then making sure that the customer revisits your e-commerce website, is a tricky business. One may think that the task of the marketer is done once the prospective visitor is converted into a customer. But that is just the beginning. Once you are through with the initial sales phase, comes the phase when you have to give the customers solid reasons to return back to your website for repeat purchases. Customer loyalty is a hard thing to get, and it becomes even harder online.

Of the various ways which are used to get that customer back to your website, E-mail marketing is one of the most used and also the most looked-down-upon methods of e-mail marketing. E-mails that are sent out to market any product or a service or a brand are normally trashed or tagged as spam either by the e-mail service provider or by the user itself. If you are not providing the customers with the information which they need, in the way which they desire, then your e-mail marketing campaign is destined to be doomed. You may even face the paradox of a customer switching to another brand even if your brand is far better or is cheaper. E-mail marketing might just be the difference between the two.

Now how would you go about planning this e-mail marketing campaign, without landing up in the spam folder of your customer e-mail? There are certain hugely important strategies that need to be put into place before sending that all important e-mail. But let us start from the basics:-

Building a Qualified Customer Email List

If you’re not doing this, then you probably shouldn’t even be in the business of selling. Maintaining a customer database is as basic as it gets. For all the customers you get, always make sure that an online database is maintained so that the customer can be mailed directly from the company’s website. This would certainly save time and resources wherein the company would not have to send the mails to everyone, but only the specific targeted customer. This also gives a high probability of getting a customer response to the mail.

Newsletters – Daily/Weekly/Monthly

Information is the key in the increasingly cluttered world of internet. Useful information is hard to come by and search results sometimes do little justice to the time and effort spent at obtaining them. Therefore when it comes to e-mail marketing, information remains the most important point of consideration. Where most companies often stumble is that they take these mails as an advertising campaign where they try to put up a great show without any substance. This is a strict dislike when it comes to users who hate getting useless e-mails which are of no value to them. Instead the marketer should go in for a information-based approach in which the main aim of the marketer is to inform the customers about the offerings of the company or about the industry in general; anything that adds to the knowledge of the customers will be surely welcomed. In between all this the marketer should not forget that hard-selling in such newsletters should be done in a very subtle manner.

As far as the content of the online newsletters or e-mails goes, one should keep the following things in mind:-

• Keep the content restricted to relevancy and do-not over-write
• Include relevant links that direct the customer back to your website.
• Advertise to create the best possible impact
• The angle of Search engine optimization (SEO) too should be kept in mind as the images too need to be tagged (ALT tag)
• Image tagging also helps in identifying the content of the image in-case the browser does not display the image.

The nature of online marketing is such that Price has become secondary and customer experience and response along with a great after-sales support have gained prime importance.

Follow-up Mails

The first learning of Sales is the Follow-up call. A customer needs to be reminded that the company is concerned about the customer and values his/her decision to trust in the company. The e-mails can thus also be used for conducting surveys, in which the customers can be asked about their review about a product or a service or about their expectations with the company or just their experience with the company. This whole process is vital to keep the business alive as they not only provide valuable information about the customers but are also capable of generating new leads for the company.

Customer loyalty creation is the be-all end-all of any brand in the world. E-mail marketing is just one of the several great solutions available on the internet to bring about a successful e-commerce business.

116,281,366. This is the number of times the Old Spice channel videos have been viewed so far with 146,098 subscribers. A jaw-dropping number capable of creating another Tom Cruise jumping-on-the-couch-moment for the company. The viral campaign for the men’s cologne brand has been a runaway success so far owing to its catchy and funny videos which revolve around the actor Isaiah Mustafa, who portrays the image of the alpha male, someone what every man aspires to be. For the marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy, it was a job well done as it created an immense hype around a brand that was till now, struggling to compete in the shark waters of the men’s cosmetics industry. [...]

To the victor belong the spoils. Now that the world cup has become a part of the sporting and television history with viewership reaching astronomical figures and ad spends reaching maddening heights. Brands all over the world strutted their stuff with every medium they could get their hands on. Television ads featuring the top football players from all over the globe put their best foot forward trying to beat off the competition. Nike and Adidas headed this race with both the sports brands spending heavily on their promotions. Nike, even though not an official sponsor of the World Cup was the biggest gainer with its mammoth 3minute “Write the Future” ad campaign. A study by Nielsen found that Nike created a significantly bigger “online buzz,” a study based on an analysis of blogs, message boards and social networking websites. And, it was best associated with the World Cup than any other brand. Even though Adidas was “on paper”, the official sponsor, but it came a distant second in the race to get the max out of the ‘once-in-a-four-year’ football extravaganza. [...]

2009 saw exponential growth in 2009. According to various surveys, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year –over-year in February registering more than 7 million users each month. Facebook outspaces Myspace. David Armano of HarvardBusiness.org in his predictions for the year ahead hits the nail on the head.

Here is a synopsis of the trends predicted for Social Media in 2010:

Corporations look to scale:

Big organizations have done t all in year 2009. They have experimented with social media marketing & supported one-oofs, now is the time to become much more pragmatic in approach. Programs & Campaigns would be designed strategically. Best buy’s Twelforce is a great example of how Twitter is used as customer support application.

Social Media becomes less social:

New Privacy Settings like “Hide” option in Facebook has become very common. Not everyone can fit into the group r listings in Twitter making the networks in general appearing making network more exclusive. May be the case is not making it less social but it might seem that way as we all come to terms to get value outta our networks.

Social Business becomes a serious play

It’s interesting to see how small/large corporations move much heavily into entertainment. A new network like “Foursquare” are touted for the focus on making networked activity local and mobile. Its game like quality is making it the buzz of town.

Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced)

A corporate social media policy would be a must. Integrating social media to help the brand would not be a bad idea after all!

Mobile becoming Social Media lifelines

Companies banning social media access would see employees stepping out & jumping on their smart apps for a social media break.

Sharing no longer means ‘emails’

The user behavior has changed. Sharing via emails has deceased a lot over last year. Or at least I haven’t noticed emails with funny videos floating and jamming my email box. This is often seen on Twitter or Facebook.