At last year’s TFM&A exhibition, Steve Lomax from Experian CheetaMail (who have a range of white papers on email marketing available for download) gave a presentation about email marketing which you can watch online.

In it, he gives an overview of how email marketing is changing using information from a range of their clients, the most interesting of which is that the overall volume of emails sent has increased by 42% and overall revenue has increased by 35% from 2008 to 2009.

Email marketers have implemented a range of campaigns with more relevance, targeting and variety to increase sales (which then increase volume rather than the other way around).

He uses Boden as a case study to illustrate his point. They’ve moved from a catalogue retailer (with a single, standard catalogue) to making 75% of their sales online. This has allowed them to target their marketing activities and provide relevant and personalised information. They combined their online and offline data to create clear pictures of their customers and segmented their customers. Their emails now include dynamic content such as offers and products. Boden’s new email strategy has seen increases in open rates, click-throughs and sales and a decrease in unsubscriptions.

They have also developed their website to incorporate user-generated reviews (and now have over 43,000 reviews!) Shoppers are now able to base their buying decisions on other customers rather than just the marketing messages provided by Boden. To generate reviews, Boden sent thank you emails to purchasers asking them to rate their purchases. Boden used Bazaarvoice to organise and generate reviews who have some other case studies and white papers on their website. Other companies have used user reviews in their email marketing campaigns to generate further sales.

Steve goes on to talk about other email marketing tips such as making the most of transactional emails to build relationships with the customer and provide opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. These emails have very high open rates so it makes sense to use them as a marketing opportunity. In his example from HMV, this has been extended throughout the customer lifecycle, e.g. order updates, service information.

He talks about remarketing, following up on abandoned transactions/processes, to increase sales and conversion rates. Experian’s research suggests that around 40% of customers would complete their transaction after a service-based email reminder as it is a very effective, targeted technique.

Social media provides opportunities to increase email subscriber lists and by allowing users to share content directly to social media networks, make sure your message is spread more widely. As mentioned in a session at this year’s TFM&A, SMS can be used to increase list size.