Rachel Rewerts

Most of you probably know about scheduled and triggered e-mails. However, when talking with potential clients, I'm finding a lot of people still aren't aware of the value. I was on a call with such a client and we were discussing the ways they use e-mail. They send out a monthly newsletter, updates on special events and membership renewal notices. I asked which task was the most frustrating. Hands down it was membership renewal reminder e-mails.

They have someone, let's call her Sally, who will run a report the beginning of each week. This report gives them e-mail addresses for members that are 30, 60, 90, -30, -60, and -90 days from their renewal date. Sally then sends out these e-mails in batches of about 30 at a time. Why such small batches? Well, because they are not using their current ESP for this task. It's always cheaper and easier to use Outlook, right? For the next day and a half Sally is sending out e-mails, and that's the minimum time required if she is not interrupted too many times.

A day and a half every week!! Folks, that is roughly 10 hours if you take in consideration breaks and lunch time. It’s time for math class. Let's pretend Sally is making $10 an hour. Multiply $10 by 10 hours a week and 52 weeks in a year. All in all this adds up to $5200 a year. Still think sending these type of e-mails using Outlook is cheaper or easier? Yeah, me neither.

So, we began our conversation about scheduled and triggered e-mails based on specific criteria. What if we could set up a scheduled mailing based on your criteria and the e-mails would go out automatically each day/week/month (doesn’t matter you choose)? Sally wouldn't even have to log in to send it. In addition, we could set up a triggered mailing to go out automatically based on the recipient's actions in the e-mail. What would that mean to your business? Sally would free up about 25% of her week to work on other projects to increase membership and grow business.

Think about some of your processes for communicating with your customers. Is there a more efficient way? How do you track and evaluate your results? We all believe the cliché “work smarter, not harder.” How are you making your business more efficient in 2010? Need ideas? Call me 317.269.7442. Reach me by e-mail, rrewerts@delivra.com.

Rachel Rewerts | Sales & Business Development