Evaluating your email (e-mail) marketing best practices and fast track adjustments

Key words:  email, e-mail, marketing, integrated, data, capture, analysis, response, personalize, relevant, interaction, meta, customer, latest data, database server, real time, ROI, measurements, web marketing

Use the following evaluation sheet to see how much of best practices you are using in your email marketing and how much it is integrated with other web marketing activities of your company. 

1	Do you use latest data in personalizing your letter? Typically we need double verification	Yes/no
2	Do you personalize your letter? It is not enough just personalize the email with the name.  While addressing the individual in the right way is the beginning, personalization is about being relevant to the individual.  This means you have to have personalized transaction/interaction related information in the mail and address useful concerns related to those interactions or transaction; Ninety percent of the companies yet to do these for their emails to be of relevant to the consumers	Yes/no
3	Do you have a clear response mechanism included in the email?  This is usually the easiest part to implement in this electronic world; however it needs a clear and careful marketing approach to the product/service communication; a slippery track but people do not mind reading combination of marketing and service information, if does not go overboard.	Yes/no
4	Do you verify existing personal information, every time you interact with your consumer? – Interestingly, when this is done correctly, this creates more trusting relationship with the consumer.  We do not have to verify all the information every time we interact with consumers.	Yes/no
5	Do you have a systematic meta data repository about customer interactions?  Besides having traditional meta data elements about name, address, their likings, and dis-likings, the meta data repository should include text parser so that key words are picked up from various interactions with your customers.  The text parser is becoming important especially when all the channels of web marketing are integrated (see point 7 below).  This will aid in communicating with your customers in a relevant way	Yes/no
6	Is your email marketing powered by a sophisticated database server which has advanced features to handle email marketing?  The advanced email marketing requires that features such as database driven personalization, merging, multi-threads, real time database, integrated database, and meta-data repository are incorporated to be fully relevant to customers.	Yes/no
7	Do you integrate your email marketing with your other channels of web marketing? The interaction and supporting of other channels of marketing such as search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, chat marketing, viral marketing, eNewsletter marketing, banners and ads, and viral marketing are important if pure effect of email marketing needs to be evaluated.	Yes/no
8	Do you measure effectiveness of email marketing along with other channels of web marketing?	Yes/no
9	Do your ROI measurements processes utilize data in real time?	Yes/no
10	Are your ROI measurements tied to the transaction data and customer service data?	Yes/No

You know yourself, where you stand when you evaluate your email marketing with this evaluation sheet.  May be you are satisfied with part of the best practices and it only adds more competitive strength if add more positive answers to the above questions.  The associated cost pays itself very easily over time, when these best practices are followed, in attending to your customers, as they say, “one customer at a time”.