Forum Moderators: skibum
What are your suggestions for email marketing software? We have an idea for email marketing such that based on an autoresponder, emails are generated when triggered by how the individual answers the autoresponder. I have yet to come across something like this for the small business (not enterprise level tools).
For example: Customer buys products and opts-in on a mailing list.
First email is delayed 15 days and sent out to ask how the customer is doing with his/her product/s. Multiple choice A,B,C,D.
If customer answers A: then email XX will be sent out;
If customer answers B: then email XY will be sent out;
If customer answers C, then email YZ will be sent out;
etc...
If the process can be 'chained' that would be really neat but for simplicity, i think this feature alone is good enough.
Most email marketing software only does simple email marketing with no advanced rules to enable it a viable platform for customers to generate their own outcomes.
Does anyone know of any good software/tool/web-app that can do this? Paid or non-paid for small businesses?
1. Use a form structure such as radio buttons or a drop-down menu to choose the next correspondence segment.
2. Have a real person go through the emails regularly and set each individual to the appropriate track.
The first option can be completely automated, but it destroys the illusion or true correspondence that you are trying to replicate. The second is much more time-consuming (for you or an employee) but with carefully-crafted email copy it can become a very powerful selling/customer service/relationship-building tool.
The best bet is to use a combination of the two. You should be able to tell when a customer will be willing to enter a form reply or when an email response is appropriate. To start with, focus on longer strings of events and fewer choice points. This is much easier to manage.
Another hint, one of the toughest things you'll run into is creating choices points that are exhausitve; by that I mean that the choices you offer the customer address all possible needs in a finite number of choices. You'll see what I mean pretty quickly.
Regarding software, there are a few downloadable softwares that will handle the basics and are affordable. I can't recommend any by name because of the ToS, but keep searching various related keywords in Google and you'll come across something that works.
Thanks for your reply. My goal was to start breathing again from having been drowned by micromanaging the day to day operations of staying on top of my customers. A customized solution seem to be choice now and a solution which would automate the entire process would be a blast.
The closest I found was Campaigner (did I violate the TOS?) and I think it has what I am looking for except that it can not do Forms and worse of all, it costs half my arm and a kidney. For my small business, I'm not at that level to pay even their minimums to use it.
If you have good sources, can you PM me with them or forward the google search query? Sounds new-bish but I tried multiple search queiries such as email autoresponders, email marketing...etc and was disappointed in the results.
I'm looking into having this customized through Joomla or some kind of content management app for the backend. I believe it is a good investment considering it's a pay one fee thing and completely customized to my needs.
PS: would it be a neat idea to have an Email Marketing folder for people who, well, markets via email?
