TECHNOLOGY
THE POWER OF EMAIL MARKETING
To complement our ‘ Rise of the Robot ’ feature , we asked Al Keck , managing director of toinfinity his top tips for getting the most out of your e-marketing .
Toinfinity is a digital marketing consultancy that specialises in online and e-marketing . They help companies understand their customer base , enabling them to maximise their online potential and in turn generate more sales and revenue .
One of the key ways they do this is through ‘ Trigger Mail ’. As the name suggests . Trigger mail is generated or triggered by a data triggered event . It maybe that a consumer is sent an email after they abandon an online sale where they have placed items in a basket or by registering as a customer via a website . Emails can also be triggered 3 days before birthdays , 51 weeks after last purchase etc etc . All of this information is gleamed by data captured by users online and their purchase history .
Al said : “ We create customer ‘ portraits ’ for our clients . For example , if a customer has bought a cycling top and shorts , can you sell them the jacket that goes with it ? As they ’ ve bought more than one product they ’ re likely to be a brand advocate for life . They evidently like the quality and style and understand their size and kind of cycling . Why not send a targeted email selling a product that complements the existing products they ’ ve bought ?
“ The power of automating tasks and data capture cannot be underestimated . But it ’ s all in the analysis . To get quality out of robots , you have to put quality in . They ’ re only as good as their operators . The data requires sense checking to ensure its accurate , clean and as up to date as possible at all times . Brand perception is key to growth and e-messaging needs to be relevant and engaging .
“ Black Friday is a key example . Many online retailers won ’ t have seen their customer for a year . How can they contact them and get the most out of that touch point ? What are the customers buying habits ? Did they buy a deal ? Did they buy in a gift category ? Manually looking at this data would be laborious with thousands of transactions , but rise of the robot allows us to be smart marketeers . Robots in full swing offer the best possible results . But , to achieve the best possible outcome we must always ensure reporting is in place , we analyse those reports and continually check them to look for patterns to make our sales targets easier .
“ Utilised effectively robots can empower a business and help it make key decisions to move their company in the right direction , but they still rely on common sense . As we all know , technology such as SatNavs are a great tool , but they don ’ t beat local , understood , engraved knowledge . They ’ re enablers , not architects and that ’ s where we come in .”
If you have questions about your e-marketing email Al Keck : al @ toinfinity . co . uk
For more info : www . toinfinity . co . uk
Systemagic and the clever black box ...
James Eades , managing director of IT specialists Systemagic believes SMEs can protect their business against IT system failure more simply than ever before .
He said : “ Have you ever thought about how important your server is to your business ? Imagine if it was switched off for half a day or a day – could you continue to work or would you find it difficult to carry on as normal ?”
With attacks from so-called Ransomware on the rise as well as SMEs becoming more and more dependent on technology to operate , restoring systems and data from traditional backups can result in more downtime than business owners might expect .
James said : “ It ’ s not uncommon for a Ransomware infection to take all day to recover from , and often replacement parts are on nextday delivery at best if something goes physically wrong with your IT equipment . Consider the cost of a day without your server plus the associated labour costs – these can easily mount up to many thousands of pounds .”
Bigger corporate businesses have spent large amounts of money on business continuity systems which take over automatically when there is a server issue to keep the company running normally . However this type of protection has never come cheap , putting it out of reach for many small and medium sized businesses .
Systemagic are pleased to announce however the team have been working with a US company who have now set up shop in the UK to provide business continuity at a price realistic for SMEs .
James said : “ To be honest this is now not only affordable but a complete no-brainer . We don ’ t recommend anything until we ’ ve used it ourselves so for the past few months we ’ ve had our systems covered by this little black box .
“ If we pull the plug on our main server we can fire our clever little black box and within five minutes we ’ re operating as normal as if nothing had happened . We ’ re now busy rolling these systems out to our small business clients who are comforted by the fact their business is protected against the unexpected ”
The system not only keeps a local image of the IT system , but also has a cloud-based copy to connect so even a serious fire would not cause the business to totally collapse overnight . As an added bonus the system also offers a year ’ s backups kept securely online in case an important file is lost or accidentally over-written .
The cost ? Less than a daily cup of latte !
james @ systemagic . co . uk 01225 426 800
20 THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2016