Zrinity Email Marketing Blog

Another team of researchers selected Zrinity as their business critical, on-premise,  email delivery firm. It seems that each time there is a team of people conducting an in-depth and scientific research process to determine which email system, as well as which team of email delivery experts, is superior, Zrinity is the choice.

From the news release: “We chose Zrinity to help improve our sender reputation and deliverability, which is a business-critical part of our communication with our customers. Zrinity’s willingness to work with us in reaching our deliverability and business communication goals plus their efforts to create customized solutions was very beneficial in the decision making process. The goal is to increase our ability to generate more highly qualified business leads and increase revenue using the Zrinity email marketing system.”. . . . . . . . . . Read the Full News Release

More Email Marketing Resources: Email Delivery Server - Email Marketing Best Practices

Zrinity Approach to Transactional Email
At Zrinity, we approach every customer as an individual with unique needs that deserve unique solutions. In other words, we do not believe that there is a cookie cutter solution or answer for all email campaign and customization is the way our customers will reach their goals of email campaign optimization, lower costs and a greatly improved ROI.

At Zrinity, one-to-one marketing is delivering personalized email to each customer based upon their profile, preferences, behavioral touch points and beyond. Owning the technology to truly offer one-to-one marketing is a critical necessity that Zrinity offers. Most email marketers do not have the tools necessary to conduct true one-to-one marketing so they continue to batch-and-blast campaigns using a shotgun strategy. Shotgun campaigns send all recipients the same offer. Campaign Intelligence enables companies to turn complex customer data into highly customized and relevant email campaigns.

The best way to connect with a customer is through transactional emails. As this white paper demonstrates, transactional emails give you the attention of the customer as they expect and await confirmation emails, billing statements, etc. You have instantaneous behavioral information about the customer since they just took an action to produce this confirmation email or purchased something from you.

With Campaign Intelligence you can now easily transform your transactional messages into relevant email the consumer can further act on and provide offers that are highly relevant and up sells. This strategy is currently in use by most major online retailers’ web sites in the form of, “People who bought this also bought”

We help ensure through behavioral email practices that your campaign delivers transactional communication that is highly relevant and timely to your customers, utilizing a vehicle that is one of the most effective methods to achieve high-level results-email.

The highest hurdle in behavioral email is typically integration with data so you can respond to customer actions. Zrinity’s email systems have a unique way to achieve data integration to meet this end.

• New arrivals in customers interest categories
• Pre-arrival announcements
• Items back-in-stock
• Cross sell/upsell similar items
• New size/style color
• Geographic sales items
• Cross sell offers based on items in order
• Include Relevant information based on items in order
• Renewal reminders
• Shopping cart abandonment
• Remind me

Our goal is to help ensure that your messages are “heard” above the noise being created by other email marketing campaigns by simply being as relevant a possible.

More Transactional Email Marketing Sources: Transactional Email Server, Full Transactional Email Marketing White Paper (PDF), Transactional Email Definition

In this paper, we set out to prove our hypothesis that through the utilization of transactional emails as marketing and communications tools, companies can position themselves to take advantage of increased revenue, higher conversion rates and, as a direct result, a greater return on investment. To this end, we have explored what makes a transactional email unique, how to formulate them to achieve the best results and components transactional emails must contain in order to be successful. But with all the information that is available to the masses regarding best marketing practices such as these, we have to wonder, why isn’t everyone using this tool? “While transactional email offers the highest open and click through rates of any type of email, Harte-Hanks in 2005 said that most companies continue to send plain-text email with no branding or dynamic cross-sell offers.” i Why is this the case? There are numerous reasons why companies should add this one, extra, simple step in its marketing strategy. The likely answer is that many email systems either do not offer these features or they are very cumbersome to use. Taking our word for it is our hope after you’ve read this paper, but if you need one last bit of convincing, here is what the experts as Merkle, Inc. have to say:

• “These attitudinal data are corroborated and reflected in open rate data as well; the more highly personalized the content, the higher the open rate, and more importantly, the sustained email engagement over time. This means that marketers need to take advantage of these opportunities to insert their promotional and marketing messages in these updates, where they have the best opportunity for being viewed. Marketers who will achieve the largest gains in this area are those who follow traditional relevancy guidelines, and do not obstruct the main message of the email.

More Transactional Email Marketing Sources: Transactional Email Server, Full Transactional Email Marketing White Paper (PDF), Transactional Email Definition

Testing is critical to any successful marketing campaign. Through the use of survey, feedback, and monitoring, testing can be an easy to execute in-house project prior to the launch of any email campaign. Determining whether or not the email campaign is working comes on the back end of testing, which leads us to tracking the results. According to a survey by Magill, “70% of respondent [companies] said they applied basic or no analysis to any of their email campaigns.” i This really is mind blowing with respect to two points: 1) there are so many options available for tracking results and 2) there is little way to determine ROI on an email campaign without the use of tracking measures.

With respect to transactional email, they are just as much a part of the customer experience (which is why we discuss branding, loyalty, etc.) as any other communication that you have with that customer, so monitoring their responses should be a company’s first priority. While many companies are still on the outset of deep-inbox monitoring, your practices can and should include delivery, deletion without opening, open rates, click-through rates, link usage, and others. And what all this measuring, monitoring and tracking will do is show your company what is working, what is not and what needs to be modified based on feedback and responses.

More Transactional Email Marketing Sources: Transactional Email Server, Full Transactional Email Marketing White Paper (PDF), Transactional Email Definition

When it comes to the delivery of your transactional email, timing is everything. When a customer completes a transaction, it is fair to say that they assume your company will provide information regarding that transaction immediately. Through research, we determined that many sources will tell you that within 24 hours is a good rule of thumb, but we personally think this is too long to wait as that gives the customer time to consider complimentary purchases from other vendors and even in many cases to move onto other transactions having “checked” that purchase off their list. According to Antonio Ferrara of Premiere Global Services, “90% of existing transactional messages are delivered within 10 minutes of purchase.”

More Transactional Email Marketing Resources: Transactional Email Server, Full Transactional Email Marketing White Paper (PDF), Transactional Email Definition

Brand recognition was earlier defined as a key benefit in the usage of transactional email. But to make your transactional email campaign a success, you need to ensure that you are using your brand consistently in every message. Where possible, you want to make sure that your messaging and delivery through email matches the delivery of your content in other forums or channels such as through your website or in print. When possible, consider having your marketing department handle this aspect. We earlier mentioned integration of marketing and IT as another benefit of this type of email, as this goes directly to our point. If you have marketing assume this responsibility, you can help ensure brand consistency across the board.

More Transactional Email Marketing Sources: Transactional Email Server, Full Transactional Email Marketing White Paper (PDF), Transactional Email Definition

You should imply urgency where possible. By using phrases such as, “purchase now and for the next 20 minutes, you’ll also get — for free,” gives customers this sense that they are going to miss out on something big if they don’t act fast. Use this sparingly, however. You don’t want to cry wolf and have your customers catch you using the same time-limited promotional week after week in a row.

More Transactional Email Marketing Sources: Transactional Email Server, Full Transactional Email Marketing White Paper (PDF), Transactional Email Definition

HTML is better for several reasons including visibility, appearance, usability through links, and tracking. As a customer of other companies, you probably also prefer HTML to a rich text format simply because it allows you to do more. However, research has shown that customers have a higher response rate to companies that utilize HTML simply because it appears more professional and as though an investment is being made in that customer. As we’ll discuss more in the section below, HTML formatting is also the only way that you will be able to track open rates and click-throughs, which are critical to campaigns such as these.

More Transactional Email Marketing Sources: Transactional Email Server, Full Transactional Email Marketing White Paper (PDF), Transactional Email Definition

First and foremost, the content of a transactional email must be relevant, and by this we mean to the transaction. This has been touched on numerous times in the text above, but it deserves added attention. According to Marketing Sherpa, relevance is the key component to any email campaign, especially transactional, as we see in the aforementioned survey. Based on their results, “The vast majority of consumers - over 83% - will accept marketing messages in their transactional email so long as those messages are relevant.” i

This is also the accomplished through the personalization-customization of the commercial content, which is done by closely monitoring customer behavior and responding with a transactional email that delivers more solutions to meet their needs. “The more highly personalized the content, the higher the open rate, and more importantly, the sustained email engagement over time.” ii Keep in mind that as far as consumers are concerned, irrelevant information is the same thing as spam—and they don’t want either of them.

More Transactional Email Marketing Sources: Transactional Email Server, Full Transactional Email Marketing White Paper (PDF), Transactional Email Definition

The Must-Haves in Transactional Email
Now that we’ve reviewed the definition, benefits, and rules of transactional email, it’s time to address the other must-haves of transactional email. According to a recent article, Email Marketing Reports is saying that, “As people take more actions online (purchases, registrations, memberships), they generate ever more transactional emails. Does that put more pressure on you to make those emails engaging, valuable, and relevant?” Our answer is yes. And below are some of the steps you can take to help ensure that your message gets noticed. i “Integrating Promotional Content Into Transactional Email Messages” b2bemailmarketing dot com

More Transactional Email Marketing Sources: Transactional Email Server, Full Transactional Email Marketing White Paper (PDF), Transactional Email Definition