Who says email is dead?

At a tea break during a recent seminar on social media marketing, a friend said, "Email is surely dead".  He claimed that in the age of glamorous entities like content marketing and social media, email marketing was totally outdated.

He could not have been further away from truth. Neither is email dead nor outdated. It is true that content marketing and social media have become important players in the marketing landscape. However, that does not mean that emails have lost their sheen.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email has an ROI of around 4,300%.

As a smart marketer, you should combine -- social media, content marketing and email – to make your campaigns more powerful and effective. Make emails a part of your content marketing. The content in your emails should deliver value. Rather than always trying to sell, make your emails a platform to connect with your reader. Exchange valuable information for their attention and time. This kind of investment in your audience will definitely pay dividends. It will help build trust and a relationship with your prospect.

Compelling subject lines and valuable content can definitely make your subscriber open your mail. Make sure that the great content you provide impacts their life in some way or other. Great content always gets shared. Before you even know your content would be all over social media.

Changing your attitude towards email is the need of the moment. Batch and blast will not work anymore. You need to instil the values of content marketing into your emails. This will ensure a huge rise in the open rates and click through rates of your mails. This will mean that your content will be shared on social media. As a natural progression you’ll see an increase in referrals, conversions and revenue.

Have you made content marketing a part of your email marketing effort? Do let us know. We would love to share more information on email marketing techniques with you. 

Say no to spamming, opt for permission-based email marketing!

I had been getting unsolicited mails from an English-learning portal for the last one month. Though I ignored the unsought attention for a while, I got irritated in the end and blocked the sender.

This is a very usual scenario and most of us get bombarded by unwanted and unasked for correspondence every day. In this age of information explosion, no one has the time or patience for unnecessary information. That is why permission-based email marketing has become crucial.

So what is permission-based email marketing? Permission–based email marketing is defined simply by who you send email to. Permission-based emails are sent only to people that have requested or opted-in to receiving your emails. When emails are sent unsolicited it is called spam and can destroy a company’s reputation. Permission-based email stands out beyond spam as a valuable source of communication that allows businesses to reach thousands of clients purposely.

Email marketing has risen to be one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing, and creates the highest return on investment (ROI) than any other form of direct marketing. And to get the maximum out of this form of marketing, one has to ensure that it is done the proper way. And that is to go for a permission-based list.

Build your permission-based email list by creating and placing a sign-up form. Visitors to your site can then use the form to subscribe to your mailing list. Prepackaged Marketing Data ensures that each recipient of a campaign agrees to receive your communications.

Contact us to learn more about effective email marketing. 

Data Privacy is dead?

User data disclosure has always been a controversial issue. It is more than ever in the public eye after former US government contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of PRISM - a large program that saw nine companies hand over user data to the US National Security Agency. 

The current disclosure by Facebook that globally, 74 governments made 26,000 requests for access to information from 38,000 Facebook accounts in the first half of 2013 has again made internet users around the world really uncomfortable. 

According to Facebook's first Global Government Requests Report, the US demanded access to 20,000 accounts, with 79 per cent of those requests granted. India demanded access to 4144 accounts, followed by the UK (2337), Italy (2306), Germany (2068) and France (1598).

Twitter, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google are among other companies that have recently published data disclosure logs.

The disclosures have made all worry about their data privacy. How safe is your personal information on the social media? The truth is though the companies fight the requests for information from the government; many-a-time there is not much they can do. Federal law gives government the authority to demand data without specific warrants, and while companies can fight requests in secret court hearings, it's difficult.

We at Prepackaged Marketing Data strongly believe in permission-based data collection. This kind of data provides you a win-win situation as it’s all true information which is validated and always updated.

Want to know more about our data services? Opt for a free consultation

Do you know the objective of your email campaign?

It is true that blogging and social media are attaining increasing prominence in B2B marketing. But that does not in any way mean that email marketing is losing out in the race. It remains an important and cost-effective solution to drive lead generation efforts and build long-lasting relationships with clients. A well-crafted marketing email can initiate sales conversation with valuable leads and also help you stay connected to your clients. So no marketer ever underestimates the value of email marketing.

The first thing to keep in mind while starting an email marketing strategy is to define the objectives of the whole exercise. This is the most important activity. Being very clear about what you want to accomplish through your email marketing campaign is very crucial in order to achieve success.

Being aware of your strengths and weaknesses is vital. If you have just started out, experimenting with email marketing, it is best to keep it simple. Give yourself a primary objective and build from there. Trying to do too much with a limited number of contacts runs the risk of abusing your list and turning off prospects before you even have a chance to win them over.

Define your objectives. What do you want to get out of your campaign?

Do you want to inform and educate your audience?

Do you want to introduce your offerings or enhance your brand and reputation?

Do you want more leads?

Do you want to renew relationships with existing clients?

Do you want more sales?

Each of these objectives can be met using the right type of email marketing. Once you have your primary objective determined, you can easily select which email marketing message will best fit your needs.

With the right email marketing tools in place, you can build a comprehensive email marketing strategy capable of achieving a variety of objectives.

Now that the objective is decided, next what? We will help you with that. Contact us for a free consultation. 

Grow a healthy database!

Growing your database is the most basic requirement of a successful marketing campaign. A large list is often necessary for maximizing your ROI. However, large list full of ‘dead’ or irrelevant contacts will not lead to a great result. A balance between quality and quantity is especially important.

So how does one get hold of the right database? There are countless examples of marketers who have ‘taken the easy way out’ by purchasing a database. However, what these people quickly learn is that purchasing a database is not the easy option. The sender can receive countless bounces and complaints. A list bought in a hurry can result in the sender being blacklisted or even prosecuted if the contacts on the list were not legitimately obtained.

Growing your database with the right contacts will not only provide a better result, it will also ensure you remain SPAM compliant. So how do you build and maintain the perfect database without wasting time and resources? It is easier than you think. The main strategy is to develop methods of capturing contacts into your existing processes and assets. Even a small change such as setting up a laptop with a registration form at an industry event can generate great results for your business.

If you are really short of time or resources you should always approach a reliable data provider with proven track record and testimonials. Always seek a sample of the required data before making the final call.

Yes, you need Social Data!

We know right data is the foundation for an effective email marketing campaign. We also know that personalization is necessary to ensure good open and click through rates. Here is where social data comes into the picture. Impactful email marketing is not possible without social data.

Social data helps in audience segmentation, which is a crucial requirement for email marketing. The days of mass emailing are over. Social data helps in segmenting the audience into groups based on their tastes, preferences, backgrounds, networks etc. Audiences are never the same, so the same message for all is definitely not going to get you desired results. When you have so much personal information about your audience, you can list them into groups and send them emails or messages customized as per the attributes of the individual groups. You can tailor the email subject line and message keeping in mind the user’s profile. Social data improves the targeting, personalization and performance of all your email marketing efforts.

Crafting right messages to the right audiences is sure to attract more eyeballs to your email content. This means delivering email content that's so relevant to your subscribers' backgrounds, interests, and lifestyles that they're inclined to single it out among the heaps of other messages and actually read it.

Let us know if you are facing difficulty finding relevant data and learn more about how social data can drive email marketing performance and improve the targeting & personalization of all of your Marketing efforts.

Data Quality & Corporate Success go hand in hand

Organizations, more than ever, rely on business intelligence systems to make key decisions. There is a huge emphasis on creating applications that can improve organizational productivity and efficiency and generate customer loyalty, for example, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (CRM), and Business Intelligence (BI). 

Companies invest huge amounts of money on these technologies to ensure streamlined business processes. However these systems can only reach its potential if they work on valid data.  Inaccurate data can make the whole system ineffective and impact the decision process as well.  

Decision makers who formulate business plans and strategies based on analysis derived from these enterprise applications are at risk unless a data quality program can ensure data validity at the most basic level. Decisions based on faulty data can cause direct financial loss, undermine customer loyalty, and damage an organization’s credibility. Data quality experts estimate that bad data can cost a business as much as 10 to 20 percent of its total system implementation budgets.

Any business improves efficiency and reduces risk exposure through quality data. After all, the information applications that run the business run on data themselves.

Do not make the mistake of underestimating data.