Email Marketing Campaigns

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Revision as of 12:28, 25 September 2012

If you have not already considered marketing by email, here are a few reasons why it is more efficient and effective than traditional mail marketing—and why it can save you money:

• It is much less expensive—no labor costs or expenses for paper, envelopes and stamps
• It saves time—email marketing campaigns only take a couple of minutes to send, compared with the long process of printing, addressing, and mailing letters
• Templates are already created for you—they are colorful, professional, and contain personalized customer information
• Email marketing generates an immediate response from your customers—email messages can be received by your customers within minutes
• Campaign results are tracked instantly—you can use the Constant Contact Web site to track how many customers have placed orders using links in your marketing email messages
• Establish and build relationships—email marketing keeps you in touch with current and prospective customers and builds lasting relationships

Creating Email Campaigns in the Marketing Wizard

As you begin creating an email campaign, keep in mind that only customers with email addresses are extracted for the campaign.

To create an email campaign using the Marketing Wizard:

1. On the FTD Mercury Main Menu, click Marketing. The Marketing Wizard opens.
2. Click Create a New Campaign.
3. On the Create Campaign panel, in the Campaign Name field, enter a campaign name. Remember that this campaign can be used later, so make the campaign name as specific as possible (for example, indicate that it is an email campaign).
4. In the Referral Code field, select the referral code that you want to give the campaign that you are creating. A referral code must be assigned to the campaign so that you can track sales that were generated by the campaign during campaign analysis.
   If you do not see the referral code you want to use, click Add New Referral Code, type the new referral code and then click Add. The new referral code is available to use in the Marketing Wizard immediately, however you must restart FTD Mercury and Mercury Administration for the new referral code to display in those programs.
5. Select Email as the Distribution Type.
6. From the Campaign Type list, select the appropriate campaign type.
7. Click Next.
8. In the Select Target List panel, select the target list for your campaign. Your options are:
   • Select a predefined list—This allows you to select a predefined list of either all your customers, new customers, top customers, or customers by ZIP code. Select the appropriate customer list from the box on this panel.
   • Refresh list from a previous campaign—This allows you to use a target list of customers from a previously executed campaign, but it also refreshes the data to include any new or changed customers that meet the criteria for that campaign. Click Select to select the campaign from which the list will be refreshed.
   • Load a list from a previous campaign—This loads an exact list of customers that was used in a previous campaign. Click Select to select the campaign from which the list will be loaded.
9. Click Next.
10. The options that display on the Key Criteria panel depend on the options selected in the Select Target List panel. Provide the information requested and click Next.
    

    If you have multiple stores, remember to choose the store that contains the customer records that you want to extract. If you select the main store, the program does not extract duplicate customers if you have customers saved at multiple stores. If you extract by Top Customers, the system extracts the top number of customers at the selected stores. However because the system is designed to eliminate duplicate records, the system eliminates duplicate top customers if the extracted customers are top customers at more than one store (therefore you may select to extract 100 top customers, but because duplicates are eliminated, only 50 are actually extracted).

11. The Output Fields panel displays all of the output fields that are available for extraction. Output fields are the merge fields that will be inserted into your document. Click Next.
12. The Preview and Edit List panel allows you to preview the list of customers before you save your campaign. Before reaching the final panel in the wizard, review the list and see if you want to remove any customers from the campaign. Any records that are highlighted are missing information.
    

    If you type information in the grid, the information is saved only in this specific customer list (the information is saved only in this particular .csv file and is not saved in your customer database).

    • To exclude a customer from the list, right-click on the customer record and then click Delete Row.
    • To view the criteria that you selected throughout the wizard, click View Criteria.
    • If you want to change the criteria, click the Back button to go back to previous panels and change your selections.</i>
13. Click Next. The Save Campaign panel opens.
14. Select Generate Email List Now to save the campaign and generate the .csv customer list now, and/or click Schedule to schedule the campaign. If you are scheduling the campaign, click Create to create the schedule (see Scheduling Campaigns for details).
15. If you want to upload the customer file to the Constant Contact Web site now, select Launch Constant Contact eMail Marketing Website so that your browser can take you to the Constant Contact Web site.
16. Click Finish. The campaign saves and you are returned to the Marketing Wizard main panel. If you selected Generate Email List Now, your customer list is saved as a .csv file on your hard drive in the C:\Wings\Customer Lists directory. The file name is the campaign name followed by the date and time that you saved the campaign.
    

    Customer lists are only saved in the C:\Wings\Customer Lists directory on the server. If you are working on a client PC, you must retrieve the .csv on the server PC in that directory. Clicking the Find my Previous Lists link does not find the customer list on the client PC.

    
    

    Customer lists (.csv files) should not be viewed in Microsoft Excel (the data may be sorted incorrectly when viewing in Excel).

If you Scheduled the campaign, the email messages are sent automatically according to the schedule that you specified.

1. The next step is to upload the customer file to the Constant Contact Web site. If you did not select Launch Constant Contact eMail Marketing Website to access the marketing Web site now, you will later have to go to the Constant Contact Web site at ftd.constantcontact.com to upload the file.

Executing Your Email Marketing Campaign on the Constant Contact Web Site

After creating an email marketing campaign within Mercury Marketing, you can upload the campaign to the Constant Contact Web site at ftd.constantcontact.com to execute your campaign.

Email marketing distribution is billed separately by Constant Contact, the company that maintains the email marketing Web site. FTD has partnered with Constant Contact to create a seamless email marketing Web site for you to use on your own. The Web site includes easy-to-use, professional marketing templates for you to use. You simply upload your marketing campaign (customer email list) to the Constant Contact marketing Web site, customize the templates, and create a sending schedule. The email messages are sent with the information you want to send, when you want to send it.

Constant Contact does not allow you to upload third-party customer lists (i.e., lists that you purchase). You may only upload lists of customers that you already have a relationship with (customers that reside in your database). New anti-spam laws are now in place with penalties. Constant Contact is at the forefront of these new laws.

Guidelines for Developing Email Campaign Messages

If you are using email marketing, here are a few things to consider before beginning.

Maximize Deliverability

• Avoid SPAM trigger words like “discount” and “free” in your email text. These words are SPAM (junk mail) triggers and may be caught by some customers’ email filter programs that help avoid SPAM. Constant Contact will pre-screen your text and subject lines for trigger words and prompt you to change them. If you want to use these words, it is recommended to embed them into graphics.
• Use subject lines that will capture attention.

Tips for Writing Content

Although Constant Contact will provide predefined templates on their site, keep these tips in mind if you decide to change any of the text. Also, please refer to Constant Contact Central (located upon registration on the Constant Contact Web site) for more tips and tricks for creating successful campaigns.

• Be short and to the point. Remember email is the fastest growing marketing channel and consumer mailboxes are packed.
• Make sure your message is about the customer and what you can do for them. It should be more “you” focused than “we” focused.
• Keep the most important part of your message at the top. Avoid making the customer scroll down—they may not.
• Before using personalization, take a realistic look at the integrity of the data you are using. Is it reliable? If you reference a previous purchase, are you referencing a full product name, or rather an abbreviation that will make little sense to your customer?
• Consider customers who share email addresses. What if you reference a gift sent by the husband to someone his wife would object to, and they both read the email at the same home email address?
• Use of personalization may not improve response across lists. You need to test it with different types of customers. If you decide to use personalization, have some targeted letter copy in addition to their personalized name.
• People respond to incentives. Test some and incorporate the ones that work into your offers.

Creating a List of Customer Email Addresses

If you want to create a list of customers and their email addresses for other uses, you can do so using the Mercury Marketing Wizard.

To create a list of customers and their email addresses:

1. Launch the Mercury Marketing Wizard.
2. On the Welcome panel, click Create a new Campaign.
3. On the Create Campaign panel, in the Campaign Name field, enter a a name for the campaign.
4. From the Referral Code list, select a referral code to use for this campaign. Alternatively, click Add New Referral Code to create a new referral code to use.
5. For the Distribution Type, select Direct Mail. (This may seem counter intuitive, but it is the correct choice.)
6. From the Campaign Type list, select the appropriate campaign type.
7. Click Next.
8. On the Select Target List panel, select Build Your Own List, and then select By Customer.
9. Click Next.
10. On the Key Criteria panel, ensure all options are cleared and click Next.
11. On the Output Fields panel, select Customer Name and Customer Email Address. Ensure all other options are cleared.
12. Click Next.
13. On the Preview and Edit List panel, review the list of customers and their email addresses. If you want to remove a customer from this list, right-click on the customer and click Delete Row. When you are satisfied with the list, click Next.
14. On the Save Campaign panel, select Execute Campaign Now.
15. Click Finish.

You will receive a message informing you of the name and location of the file containing the customer names and email addresses, which you can open in Microsoft Excel. The files are typically stored in C:\Wings\Customer Lists\Customer Lists for Manual Merging.