Sending targeted email messages

If you do any level of email marketing you will understand the power of sending a targeted message. By knowing your customers, their characteristics and preferences, you can segment them to receive focussed messages.
Many companies can achieve this but in such a disjointed way that it is near impossible. Not only will a joined up approach make your marketing better it will save you time and money.
To achieve this you need five things;

1. an understanding of your customers and their preferences to work out the segments;
2. a way of recording and filtering by each segment;
3. an easy way to create a focussed email message for each segment;
4. a joined up way of merging the message and segmented contacts to send the email;
5. tracking to monitor activity and responses to your message.

Great examples of joined up systems are ACT! 2011 and Swiftpage or Sage CRM & Swiftpage. Use ACT! 2011 or Sage CRM to manage the segments & groups, then get Swiftpage to design, sent and track activity. Finally, Swiftpage records all activity back in ACT! or Sage CRM!

Compound training

I am experimenting with the idea of compound training. Most people have heard about compound interest - the idea of adding interest to your capital investment to earn more interest on the combined amount. Compounding is one of the best investment 'tricks' there is.

In the business software world, training is usually a one hit wonder - you get a system and get some training. This can be problematic since users are expected to go from no knowledge to expert in one leap. Some people are good at this but they usually have a background knowledge to draw from - have worked with systems before, like playing with IT etc.

I am trying an approach that gives a new user access to training in steps that can be compounded. For example - if we implement a new Sage ACT! system we might follow three steps:

Step 1 - get the users watching a short introduction video as soon as possible (preferably before they get access to the system). This makes them familiar with the look of the system in a low threat way and only takes a matter of minutes.

Step 2 - a short person led training session based on their job. During this session they only cover what they need to start using the system.

Step 3 - for the advanced student. This is where we cover the system in depth, going through functionality that they aren't using now but that could be of use in the future.

Subsequent steps cover specific areas of the system in great depth but only when the user knows they need it and will put it to use.

This approach allows users to build their knowledge and confidence. At any point they can jump off the training schedule and go on their own, but the key is not to jump off too early. Too little training is the main cause for businesses struggling with the systems they use.

Maybe there's no rocket science here but it seems to work. The key is to make training available in bite-sized chunks that are approachable and affordable.