Email Marketing India

Timing is everything, when it comes to email marketing communications

2011-09-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

Our friends in the Indian eCommerce space are gung ho about the current boom ! Never before have so many Indians – both in India and overseas filled up their shopping carts and proceeded to check out. Never have Call to Action buttons seen so much action.

Which brings us to one of the most important communication vehicles these propositions ride on……….daily mailers!

Digital direct marketing communication – your one on ones with potential buyers are not as easy as ABC, but if you have been following our blog, you would’ve picked up the juiciest bits on email template best practices and set up a fantastic email template. You know the importance of deliverability and other success metrics and you are sure your recipients are definitely receiving your email campaigns….there’s just one more question you need to ask yourself…. are they reading them?

Some of the key considerations which email marketers must take into mind while creating a “read & respond” campaign are:

Relevance: making the content relevant to each recipient. If a recipient knows that when your brand arrives in their inbox, this email is definitely something they have expressed an interest in and want to read, they will act on that.
Segmentation: The best way to implement relevance is to effectively segment your database so you know what your customers are interested in and therefore what content will be the most relevant. You read a lot more on relevance on our blog soon!

You are now ready with that killer content, a solid Email Service Provider (ESP) behind you – btw choosing an ESP can be quite a task , here’s hoping you’ve done it right , what next?

Ask Usain Bolt, what the importance of timing is? No seriously, a great proposition, even with A/B split tested subject lines and creatives can turn horribly wrong if the timing is off . Common sense – nope …….experience !! ( The school of hard knocks third semester )

A well timed campaign – other criteria remaining the same - can work wonders on the open rates and further on the ROI of the campaign. Unfortunately, there is no formula or overall ‘ideal time slot’ which you can follow to achieve this elusive ‘golden hour’. There are a number of factors that go in to your decision: what time is best to hit the send button? ( btw with a good ESP – it would be the Schedule button )

Timing – Day and hour depends on the answers to the following questions.

Who are your audience?

For a B2B audience, it doesn’t take an Einstein to work out that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the optimum days. As we all know, Mondays are spent getting back in to the swing of work after the weekend and Friday sees offices winding down for the next weekend. Saturday and Sunday are redundant as offices are closed. Days before holidays are = Fridays and days after holidays are = Mondays irrespective of what days they fall on !

For B2C email marketing, timings are very different. Very dependant on the demographic of your audience. One can safely assume most prospects will mainly be checking their personal emails in the evenings, during lunchtimes and over the weekends. However it is best to test which brings us back to segmenting! B2C sending can be a bit of a gamble without thorough testing of your specific target audience. Homework must be done and learnings interpreted. A great ESP will be able to deliver dynamic content with different propositions scheduled at different times of a day or even different days.

Is your campaign seasonal?

For the B2B sector, marketers must avoid sending their campaigns over school vacation season, long weekends and of course the many holidays that we have !

Again advice for the B2C sector is entirely opposite. If relevant, a seasonal approach can boost additional sales and therefore revenue. Most campaigns are timed to address seasonal offers!

So much for planned marketing communication…

However, there is another aspect to timing in direct digital communication.

Timing can never be as important as it is when the ‘Prospect ‘is on the verge of becoming a ‘Paying Customer’ …many a sales person have rued their chances – having communicated a little later than they should have.

The optimum time for any recipient to receive your communication is when they have shown an interest in your brand or product. Using Automated mails or trigger campaigns, based on browsing behaviour or when they last clicked on or opened an email gives you a clear indication as to when to send the email and what content to include.

A typical scenario of such lost opportunities would be apparent in a colleague’s recent experience on a very popular online store. As he described it “ I was on my way to check out and proceed to pay when I saw this dangling banner in the right column : Sign up for our newsletter and get 10% off. I paused, thought I could save this 10% by signing up and using the voucher code. So I smartly opened another browser, signed up and waited for the voucher. About an hour later, neither my inbox nor my spam folder had any sign of an email from these guys . I gave up hope and eventually had lost all interest in buying that item at 10% higher than I could’ve”.

A simple Triggered email could have, rather, should have been used here to enable interest being converted to action at the point when the customer is most engaged.

Another cyclic practice is communication with non responders. Winning back non responders should be taken up as a part of your communication calendar and a definite cog in your wheel .

While still on timing, or should I say while there is time – it would be good to remind you to look for patterns in your open and click-through rates or other email metrics. Whether certain offers work better when sent at some time or another? Are there any influences that make your campaigns more successful, like salary days ( beginning of the month ) ? Are you responding to your customers at the optimum moment?

The only way for you to determine what works best for you is to, as always, test, test, test!

How are companies adopting email marketing in India

2011-09-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

India is seeing a larger attention in digital marketing space as younger and older population are getting online and their spending habits online fuelled by already established online travel companies which made their life much easier. Indian online population is enjoying now the ease with which they can book their tickets, or buying things at much cheaper prices.

Email being one of the prime digital channels for companies to continuously engage with their large subscriber base, Indian companies have long attempted multiple solutions from in-house SMTP mailers to MTA boxes to Email Solution Providers (ESP) of all sizes. As the internet email regulations have evolved over time and often dictated by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like yahoo, hotmail, Gmail and such and their continued redefinition of the rules for accepting and delivering mails to the inboxes of the recipients, Indian companies are more and more trying to use the Email Service Providers.

This has provided an opportunity for several companies to jump into providing bulk email solutions.

Some of the Indian companies have attempted to easily take some open source solutions like PHP Mailer and such and modifying or building to the needs of the Indian companies. These solutions mostly lack the authentication features required by ISPs like DKIM and speed throttling. Most of the solutions are not built for managing entire email life cycle communication and the data privacies required. Their infrastructure is not scalable and can't be separated for each of their client. This will complicate issues like IP and domain reputation. A company which has very good email practices can easily get hurt by some other company which has no good practices if they use such email solutions. Indian companies still being very slow and averse to use confirmed opt-in practices, can easily get their domain blacklisted and ISPs can soon either put their mails in spam folder or start blocking their mails.

Moreover these solutions that are not built for analytic driven marketing lack the analytic features. This makes the marketer not aware of his engaged audience by demographics, email behaviour and purchase behaviour. With no knowledge of such intelligence, Indian companies who are using such solutions are blindly shooting the mails to all subscribers, without knowing what their subscribers are doing with those emails. This can also treated by ISPs as bad senders and emails may be blocked or sent to spam folders by ISPs.

According to Reputation Authority, Indian Companies using home grown email communication platforms are sending more than 40% spam. It is very difficult for Indian email marketing solution providers to control the spam rate, as their solutions are not very sophisticated to handle all kinds of bounces, spam complaints and spam traps. Moreover there is no intelligence to analyse the active and inactive subscriber base over time.

They also lack the integration features for companies to manage their entire life cycle email communication with one solution and work with the company's portal and back end systems seamlessly.

Seeing the growth in the internet population and recent explosion in e-commerce and daily deals, several international email service providers (ESPs) have now entered the Indian market through sales team located elsewhere or in India and offering their more matured platforms to Indian companies. This is a most welcome trend.

Now there are more companies offering such solutions, the price competition is so much, International email service providers are competing with the Indian email service providers on price and dropping the account management, project management and integration features for Indian companies. When their minimum ticket size is more than 100K US Dollars per client in matured markets of USA and Europe, and they throw in a dedicated account manager, solutioning to automate the clients email communication and providing full services, the international email service providers are just providing a software tool to send bulk mails to Indian companies, with none of those needed services that are very much needed by Indian companies, as they are trying to adopt email as an effective medium.

According to Reputation Authority, even the international email service providers that are providing email platform as a tool for sending bulk email communications for Indian companies are not able to bring the spam to single digit, as they are not able to work with the Indian clients to strategise their email marketing efforts.

I see Indian companies as they trying to adopt email communication as a prime medium for their online business, is largely under served by both Indian companies who lack features and International email service providers who can't provide much needed strategy and expertise with local resources for companies to better engage their subscribers.

Email cost measured in CPM (cost per thousand) may be a deciding factor when you choose the email service provider. While each ESP may have a cost per CPM to compete, a self managed email platform may not be a single decisive factor.

Indian companies have to start looking at not only the platform, but also need to look at the expertise of the email service provider on their mailing infrastructure, security practices for their data, expertise in email marketing, though leadership, ability to do customizations, integrate their websites and backend systems for life cycle email communication and ability for managing their email campaigns.

I see some Indian companies have understood the importance of much needed services along with the email platform and are choosing the email service provider based on a broad spectrum and depth of services and expertise offered to better optimize the email medium.

I believe that most matured and smart Indian Companies are trying to stop blasting the emails to all in blind everyday and start using intelligent analytic driven customer engagement email communication in the days ahead.

This is most welcome news for the most spammed Indian Internet consumer.

Does your Email Service Provider is certified for Information Security of Customer's personal data?

2011-07-11T23:22:00.001-07:00

You might have heard recently the news of data theft at Epsilon, and more than 50 million customer's personal information was stolen. You might have also heard about that sosasta’s data recently got compromised.

It is evident from both the incidents that adequate measures have not been put in place by companies to secure their customer's data, which has resulted in hacker's attacks and subsequent compromise of customer's data. Customer's personal data falling into hackers hands is a serious issue, which may result in monetary exploitation, legal suites and etc.

With the launch of Data Seal, the DMA is giving its members a roadmap for how to cope with growing consumer concerns about the security of their personal information.

Central to the standard is the goal of establishing an industry-wide approach to information security and to reflect the tight integration between clients and suppliers when managing personal information. The mechanisms and rules it outlines for protecting data are intended to protect the reputation fo the DM industry as well as offering guidance on how to deal with external complaints and queries.

In order to gain accreditation, member companies have to address a raft of issues, from hardware and software requirements to staff training and processes. The Data Seal is given to a company following an audit by BSI. An annual audit is then required to keep the seal.

So, next time when you talk to your email service provider, ask him straight questions.

1. What Information Security measures have been taken to secure your customer's personal data on their systems?

2. Are the systems and processes are audited for Information Security, by a trusted third pary?

3. What is their road-map for getting DMA Data Security Certification or similar such Certification?

I am sure you would value your customer's private data and will keep it very secure, irrespective of what service providers you use?

DMA DataSeal awarded to eCircle

2011-06-26T00:45:00.000-07:00

eCircle leading the way for the email marketing industry by achieving the DMA DataSeal standard, which is a recognized standard for information security management systems. The qualification looks at a number of areas within data security including risk assessment, management responsibility, traceability and responsibility of data. The standard shows eCircle has in place the best possible systems to protect our client’s and their customer’s data.

http://www.ecircle.com/en/home.html

Does your Email Service Provider (ESP) provide you just the mailing platform?

2011-06-14T23:54:00.000-07:00

Most of the Email Service Providers just provide a software platform for Marketers to blast emails? Is email marketing communications so simple? It it was so simple, then why the companies need a software platform from ESPs? They can just host an SMTP infrastructure and blast mails?

Email Software Platform just provides you the capability to blast mails in an unintelligent way. There are many intelligent analytic required in the platform, to ensure the marketers identify the non-reachable addresses, unsubscriptions, spam complaints, inactive subscribers and constantly engaging ones (not just opens, clicks, but also how many susbscribers viewed the landing page, abandon cart, and bought).

As Email Software platforms becoming sophisticated in terms of features and the ISP deliverability rules getting changed, anti-spam regulatory authorities becoming very stringent and dictating confirmed opt-in, there is increased knowledge and expertise needed for Marketers to send out intelligent and engaging email communications rather than blasting.

Hence Marketers need more than the platform. They need email strategy and consulting, a dedicated account manager and a support team that can resolve the issue quickly and efficiently. As Marketers getting busier with their business, they need an ESP who can take over their entire entire email marketing communications and manage it on their behalf!

Therefore it’s imperative that when choosing an Email Service Provider (ESP) that you select the right one who will match your needs perfectly. Read the following article on Kenscio's website.

http://www.kenscio.com/resource-center/Why_a_Fully_Managed_Email_Service_Provider.pdf

Email Marketing Data Security

2011-06-14T05:07:00.000-07:00

Recent events that mined the data from Email Service Providers has affected the credibility of the industry and has increased the importance of email data security and protection of subscriber's personally identifiable information.

There are several ways the email data can be compromised or breached. From employees to information security of the email systems and server infrastructure to policies and permissions in the system.

How does your Email Service provider can prove you that they have taken adequate measures in assuring you the security of the data and protection against the above breaches? Are they getting audited for such measures? Do they have a history of such protection?

For more details, read our presentation at http://www.kenscio.com/resource-center/Email_Marketing_Data_security_april_2011_Kenscio_V2.pdf

Power of Email Communications

2009-11-09T23:14:00.000-08:00

It has been a quite a while since I blogged about email marketing scenario in India. Lot has happened since then.

I was really amazed at the innovative ideas being put in place by Marketing departments at Media companies.

NDTV News http://www.ndtv.com recently launched breaking news alerts to deliver them into email inboxes of recipients as they happen instantly. I have subscribed to these alerts and found them amazing. It saved me much time in catching up with news without visiting their websites and check what is happenning! I can now visit the website to find more about it, when I am told what is happenning.

NDTV has really got into the front league compared to other news agencies in adopting technology to enable their readers to get what they need. I know most of the folks are quite addicted to news and spend lot of time visiting the news websites. The news alerts service from NDTV can deliver now the fresh news, rather stale at the website after being heard from someone.

One can subscribe to NDTV Breaking News alerts on their website http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/new/NDTVNewsAlert.aspx.

A Look at Email Marketing Business in India [Opportunities]

2009-08-19T00:54:00.000-07:00

A Look at Email Marketing Business in India [Opportunities]

Email Marketing to Improve Customer Acquisition and Customer Loyalty

2009-07-21T05:38:00.000-07:00

When it comes to marketing, traditional or web-based, “customer acquisition” is a key indicator when determining success and Return on Investment (ROI) from your marketing efforts. “Customer loyalty” is also very important as we know that the lifetime value of a customer is dependent on how well we communicate with and retain customers.

The following are published industry facts focused on web-based marketing and the effects on “customer acquisition” and “customer loyalty”.

Customer Acquisition Facts

Permission marketing yields 30% increase in conversion and a 10% increase in return on investment. (Permission Marketing, Seth Godin)

Traditional direct marketing costs $1.50 per item, while online direct marketing averages 15-30 cents. (Andersen)

Traditional direct mail averages 1-2% response rate. Permission marketing averages 10-15% response rates. (Direct Marketing Association)

80% of your visitors will never return to your website. (eMarketer)

The odds of selling a product to a new customer are 15%, whereas the odds of selling a product to an existing customer are 50%.

Email click-throughs measure 3-10x that of banner ads at 2-20% CTR.

Internet users represent over 72% of the U.S. population and greater than 25% spend their time online using email. (UCLA Report 2001)

Customer Loyalty Facts

It costs 5 -10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. (Emarketer)

If you trail your competition by 20 points in customer loyalty you are out of business.

Improving customer interactions is one of the single largest impact areas, across all industries. (Accenture)

A 5% increase in customer retention yields an increase in profits between 25 -100%.

Customer Loyalty Fact - Repeat customers spend 67% more; After 10 purchases, a customer has referred up to 7 people. (Bain & Company)

Online promotions generate 2 to 5 times the customer response rates of traditional promotions.

70% of complaining customers will do business with the company again if it quickly takes care of a service snafu.

For more information on email marketing solution and services, visit http://www.sprinklr.in

Sprinklr signs up several key clients for its email marketing platform

2009-07-17T23:32:00.000-07:00

Sprinklr tier 1 email marketing platform signs up several key clients in India for all their email communications.

Sprinklr e-messenger is one of the top performing email marketing platform that can pump 4 million email messages per hour. This feature is very critical for companies to deliver messages just before their subscribers ready to read, instead of delivering in the middle of the night or the day.

Sprinklr offers robust security features that makes client's customer data in safe hands, which can't be compromised at any cost. Sprinklr e-messenger in the only platform in the country that is worthy of being used by major brands and financial institutions, as it being certified by SAS 70 audits, the world's highest security audit methodology, only used by major global financial institutions.

Sprinklr is the ideal bulk email solution for Indian major brands and agencies to manange their email communication needs, as it provides seperate and integrated views and controls for email communications for several of their businesses.

Sprinklr provides higher deliverability and rich reporting metrics.

Sprinklr will be launching email to social platform soon.

For more visit http://www.sprinklr.in

Aghreni email marketing platform turns into Sprinklr e-messenger

2009-07-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

We are rebranding the Aghreni emailing platform, and your favourite service will be called Sprinklr from here on. We are going to introduce a lot many more features in the coming times which will make your email marketing experience much more sophisticated and advanced. With killer edge technology Sprinklr will bring in the same drip marketing phenomenon into your consumers social graph resulting in a much higher conversion rates and consumer's brand interaction.

At Sprinklr we promise you to give a world class product at an Indian price. We will be soon ready with the new website and will be announcing the new board members.

Sprinklr is confident to take the Indian market by a swipe in the recent coming days and would love to have you join the revolution. So make sure you realise the potential of this platform before your competition does.

For more insight on this please email jacob@sprinklr.in or, just call him @ +91 9886800993

Visit Sprinklr website at http://sprinklr.in/sprinklr/

Email Marketing Solutions and Services in India by World class company with International Expertise

2009-06-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

Indian Marketers can now get world class email marketing solution and services from Aghreni, a company with 5+ years of international experience in building email marketing solutions and supporting Fortune 500 clients for their email campaigns.

Within a short span of five months starting the Indian operations, Aghreni has signed up 20 companies in it’s account, offering integrated email and mobile messaging services. The platform is currently being evaluated by another 15 companies including some of the leading Private sector Banks and Travel portals.

The platform delivered more than 10 Million emails so far. The numbers are increasing 100% over each month. Aghreni is confident that the number of emails delivered through its platform will continue to increase exponentially over the next months, as it has increased its sales and focus on highly customer centric companies which have a potential to send out millions of emails.

Aghreni also brings its own RupeeMail acquisition brand for companies to acquire customers. Rupeemail has a doubly opt-in list of 250,000 profiles across India, that can be profiled on 23 + different segments. Over 1 million plus RupeeMails were delivered in April 2009 and few of the RupeeMail campaigns for the month include Get Tata AIG Maharaksha (Tata AIG Insurance), The Unique Pension Planner ( Aegon Religare), Register, Play And Win Big ( Virgin Mobile), Jaldibid.com ( Tanla Solutions ) & Travelocity Special Offers. Aghreni has partnered with 10+ companies to offer email list rental services to Corporates looking for quality emails list rentals in India. Aghreni and its partners offer over 5 million doubly opt-in email profiles for companies to acquire customers. The profile includes consumers, IT/ITES employees, HNIs, CXOs, Small and Medium Business Enterprises, Distributors, Doctors, Finance Managers, Corporate Decision Makers etc. The profiles can be targeted based on age, city, industry, income group and other attributes.

Aghreni's clients include leading Internet portals, Software product companies, Retail brands,Education and training institutions, Travel companies and Hotels and Restaurant chains. Aghreni’s email and mobile marketing platform provides a compelling reason for marketers to use email marketing as one of the most viable e-channels to reach out to the fast growing online customer database in India.

For more information, visit http://www.aghreni.com

Aghreni winning new strides as India’s Premier Interactive Email and Mobile Marketing Solutions and Services Provider

2009-05-16T01:04:00.000-07:00

Aghreni Technologies, the leader in interactive email and mobile marketing recently announced increased acceptance of its world class email and mobile marketing platform by Indian Corporates from various verticals. Within a short span of four months starting the Indian operations, Aghreni has signed up 15 companies in it’s account, offering integrated email and mobile messaging services. The platform is currently being evaluated by another 15 companies including some of the leading Private sector Banks and Travel portals.

The platform delivered more than 5 Million emails in the month of April 2009. The numbers are 250% over the mails delivered in March 2009. Aghreni is confident that the number of emails delivered through its platform will continue to increase exponentially over the next months, as it has increased its sales and focus on highly customer centric companies which have a potential to send out millions of emails.

Aghreni also brings its own RupeeMail acquisition brand for companies to acquire customers. Rupeemail has a doubly opt-in list of 250,000 profiles across India, that can be profiled on 23 + different segments. Over 1 million plus RupeeMails were delivered in April 2009 and few of the RupeeMail campaigns for the month include Get Tata AIG Maharaksha (Tata AIG Insurance), The Unique Pension Planner ( Aegon Religare), Register, Play And Win Big ( Virgin Mobile), Jaldibid.com ( Tanla Solutions ) & Travelocity Special Offers. Aghreni has partnered with 10+ companies to offer email list rental services to Corporates looking for quality emails list rentals in India. Aghreni and its partners offer over 5 million doubly opt-in email profiles for companies to acquire customers. The profile includes consumers, IT/ITES employees, HNIs, CXOs, Small and Medium Business Enterprises, Distributors, Doctors, Finance Managers, Corporate Decision Makers etc. The profiles can be targeted based on age, city, industry, income group and other attributes.

Aghreni's clients include leading Internet portals, Software product companies, Retail brands,
Education and training institutions, Travel companies and Hotels and Restaurant chains. Aghreni’s email and mobile marketing platform provides a compelling reason for marketers to use email marketing as one of the most viable e-channels to reach out to the fast growing online customer database in India.

Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names
in the business. Team Aghreni has many years of experience in email marketing working with some
of the world’s largest brands across the world. Aghreni brings a world class email marketing platform to the marketers to effectively measure their email marketing campaigns and reap success.

For more information on the product, please visit Aghreni's website at
http://www.aghreni.com/Aghreni_Digital.pdf

Aghreni delivers 2 million emails for Indian Marketers in the month of March 2009 alone

2009-04-04T23:47:00.000-07:00

Aghreni Technologies, leader in interactive email and mobile marketing recently published the numbers to the Industry.

It sent about 2,000,000 emails in the month of March 2009 alone, on behalf of its clients through its leading email and mobile marketing platform within 3 months of its operations in India.

Aghreni delivered these emails into recipients inboxes with 98% and above deliverability. The open rates exceeded marketers expectations at above 12%, which is way ahead of Industry benchmarks in India. The click through rates (CTR) are in excess of 25 to 30%. Its platform was able to deliver almost all the emails across all ISPs (including rediff, rediffmail.com, in.com, sify.com) without getting its emails rejected or blocked by the ISPs, which is a major issue for most of the Indian marketers. Indian Marketers are quite amazed at Aghreni's platform features, its ease of use, and powerful metrics. They were able to improve the quality of their database significantly over the campaigns and learn several best email practices to deliver the message to inbox. The platform demonstrated how marketing messages are getting delivered into all ISPs (blocked, rejected, delivered, and spam complaints). Some of the clients are quite excited with the viral marketing features in generating additional leads. The platform provides advanced features like which sections in the email message is getting clicks from recipients most, providing marketers with the knowledge about their offer positioning and creating interest. The platform also provides features on when the message is being read and clicked in real time, so that marketers can send the email message at the appropriate time.

Aghreni's clients include leading internet portals, software development companies, retail brands, education and training institutions and hotels and restaurants.

Aghreni has already 10+ clients in India and fast expanding its clients base across all verticals. Aghreni is very optimistic in delivering more emails on behalf of its client in the next few month and provide marketers with a compelling reason to use email marketing as one of the viable e-channel to reach out to their growing online customer database in India.

Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has many many years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands across the world. Aghreni brings a world class email marketing platform to the marketers to effectively measure their email marketing campaigns and reap success.

For more information on the product, please visit Aghreni's website at

http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

How Indian political parties leverage the learnings from US President Obama's email campaigns to reach out to their supporters?

2009-03-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

The supporters of Presidential candidate Mr. Obama collected millions of email addresses through the enormous rallies and countless gatherings organized by them. Through out the period to election, the supporters reached out to the voters though email and phone. After Obama's victory, his campaign sent out a message, that more is yet to come. Today Obama's office is reaching out to the citizens in all round involvement in bringing the needed changes to America.

Even though email is still at a nascent stage in India, directly reaching the voters in the country through online interactive mediums like email and mobile can't be ignored. It is a compelling reason for parties to engage the voters if they need to connect with them, just not for voting them, but to get their support for electing them and later engaging them to seek suggestions and push the changes that they need to implement.

Mass politiical rallies, announcement over megaphone on the streets, one or two visit to voter's residences are just not enough to get the support of the voters. They have to be engaged in a much more direct and interactive way. And not just to lead them to vote, and now to engage them even after coming to power through direct interactive mediums.

Some political parties have just started this effort. They may need an overall email and mobile campaign strategy to collect the email addresses, mobile numbers and other needed data to selectively target the citizens with their message, analyze the results and use the results their advantage.

Read the entire article at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/10/AR2008111000013.html?sid=ST2008111000071&s_pos=

Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has many many years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands across the world. Aghreni brings a world class email and mobile marketing platform to the marketers to effectively measure their email marketing campaigns and reap success. Aghreni provides strategic email marketing consulting and end to end interactive marketing services to Companies worldwide.
For more information about Aghreni, visit http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

High quality, low costs keep IT product companies ticking

2009-03-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

Aghreni Technologies, an e-mail and mobile marketing services company, has acquired more than half a dozen clients in the Indian market. Aghreni MD Manjunatha Kutarahalli said their differentiated offering with open source technologies has helped them bag clients in the past three months, which include large Indian business houses.

Read the entire article on Economic Times website
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/no-downturn-in-it-product-cos/articleshow/4289757.cms

Aghreni delivers 1.5 million emails for Indian Marketers in less than 2 months of its operations

2009-03-14T23:05:00.000-07:00

Aghreni Technologies, leader in interactive email and mobile marketing recently published the numbers to the Industry.

It sent about 1,450,000 emails on behalf of its clients through its leading email and mobile marketing platform in just less than 2 months of its operations in India.

Aghreni delivered these emails into recipients inboxes with 98% and above deliverability. The open rates exceeded marketers expectations at above 10 to 12%. The click through rates (CTR) are in excess of 25 to 30%. Indian Marketers are quite amazed at Aghreni's platform features, its ease of use, and powerful metrics. The platform demonstrated how marketing messages are getting delivered
into all ISPs (blocked, rejected, delivered, and spam complaints). Some of the clients are quite excited with the viral marketing features in generating additional leads. The platform provides advanced features like which sections in the email message is getting clicks from recipients most, providing marketers with the knowledge about their offer positioning and creating interest. The platform also provides features on when the message is being read and clicked in real time, so that marketers can send the email message at the appropriate time.

Aghreni's clients include leading internet portals, software development companies, retail brands, education and training institutions and hotels and restaurants.

Aghreni has already 10+ clients in India and fast expanding its clients base across all verticals.

Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has many many years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands across the world. Aghreni brings a world class email marketing platform to the marketers to effectively measure their email marketing campaigns and reap success.

For more information on the product, please visit Aghreni's website at

http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

Aghreni's email and mobile messaging platform to deliver localised rich content for marketers to target vernacular demographics

2009-02-27T22:39:00.000-08:00

Aghreni's bulk email and mobile messaging platform can deliver rich HTML content in Indian languages for Indian Marketers to target the non-english speaking segments.

Aghreni demonstrated the platform features to leading marketers in India and several have shown interest to target the non-english speaking segments in non-metro towns across the country.

Aghreni's platform is an ideal choice for marketers to deliver marketing campaigns through rich HTML message on email and mobile messages through SMS channels. It has powerful reporting features to track the delivery (opens, clicks, bounces), inbox deliverability and spam complaints from ISPs (yahoo, gmail, hotmail, rediff).

For more information, visit URL http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

Does Your Email Marketing Software Provide You The Metrics For Measuring The Success Of Campaigns?

2009-02-23T09:26:00.000-08:00

Aghreni Technologies discusses on how working with an email marketing software or provider who provides all the relevant metrics for measuring the success of email marketing campaigns is absolutely essential.

Peter Drucker, the father of ‘modern management’ said ‘If you can’t measure, you can’t control it; if you can’t control, you can’t manage it”.

If you can’t manage, you are simply wasting your effort and money both.

This is true with your email marketing campaigns. You are simply wasting your marketing budget down the drain, if you don’t measure the success of your email marketing campaigns! You may also be hurting your brand and reputation eventually!

Let us look at the key metrics that you would need to understand and measure the success of your email marketing campaigns.

1. Deliverability: This metric gives you the picture of how many emails were successfully sent out by your email marketing software or provider. Ideally you would need 100%. Practically no email marketing software or provider will guarantee 100% deliverability, because of many issues. The issues range from the hygiene of your list, ISP rejections and blockages, recipient’s inbox full, etc.

If you are using a reputable email marketing solution or provider, you should be getting deliverability in excess of 95% to your opt-in list from the first campaign itself. The deliverability for successive campaigns should be in excess of 99%.

If you are not getting these numbers, you should be seeking honest answers from your email marketing solution vendor or provider or the hygiene of your opt-in list.

You should be checking if your email software marketing solution or provider

a. Have capabilities to check the invalid email addresses even before sending them out?

b. Allow defining policies for retrying sending again in case of soft bounce?

c. Can export the hard bounce and soft bounce email addresses for further validation?

2. Detailed Domain Report: Just getting a consolidated report of emails delivered across all of the domains is not enough for a marketer. Marketer has to get a detailed report of the performance of the email marketing software on how many emails were sent successfully to each of the domains or ISPs (gmail, yahoo, msn, aol, rediff, etc.), how many were rejected, how many were blocked, what was the number of spam complaints etc. This requires your email marketing software or provider has to work with the ISPs to get these. If they do not, they may not have a relation with the ISPs and have a feedback loop for you to take further action. If you don’t have visibility to abuse complaints of your ISPs and your email marketing provider doesn’t provide them, your reputation will be badly hurt as you can’t take action on those proactively.

3. Opening Rate: This metric gives you the number of recipients who opened the email message.

Does your email marketing software or provider give you the measure of both total number of emails opened and unique number of recipient’ openings. You should be considering the total number unique openings more than the total openings because a recipient opening the same mail twice or thrice doesn’t mean anything for the marketer.

The industry standard benchmarks for the open rates are between 8 to 10%. If you are getting better than these results through your current email marketing software or provider, you are doing great. If you are getting way too less, you should be seeking answers from your email marketing software or provider.

4. Click Through Rate (CTR): This is a measure of the action of the recipient seeking more information by clicking the links embedded in the email message sent. This is a measure of the interest of the recipient. It doesn’t necessarily convert to a sale or registration, but it is a step closer.

Does your email marketing software or provider give you the measure of both total number of link clicks (for all links, by each link) in the message and unique number of clicks for each link. You should be considering the total number of unique clicks more than the total clicks because a recipient may be clicking the same link twice or thrice doesn’t mean anything for the marketer.

The industry standard benchmarks for the click through rates are between 2 to 3%. If you are getting better than these results through your current email marketing software or provider, you are doing great. If you are getting way too less, you should be seeking answers from your email marketing software or provider.

5. Unsubscribe Rate: This is the number of unique email addresses that do not want further emails from you. They didn’t have an interest in your message so they unsubscribed.

Does your email marketing software provide you the details of unsubscriptions? Does it provide policies for setting the limit on the emails sent to each recipient irrespective of how many campaigns you may be doing? Does it provide policies to unsubscribe across multiple lists? If not, you are dealing with lot of manual effort in unsubscription and may be not effectively taking actions on unsubscriptions. If you don’t take action on unsubscriptions quickly, your next email marketing campaign may be marked as SPAM by the recipient and complained to ISPs, which could hurt your reputation of being a good marketer.

6. Viral Rate: Hopefully you’ve got some viral component to your emails where they can be forwarded and measured. Don’t dismiss your viral rate… it’s a great way to acquire subscribers who stick as well as add additional revenue to a great campaign.

Your email marketing software or provider should provide a mechanism to capture all of the forwarded email addresses for later analysis and targeting.

7. Conversions: This is the number of unique email addresses that ’registered’ or ‘bought’. For a retailer, this is pretty simple… it can be the actual registrations or dollar amount that resulted in a web site purchase. For other businesses, a conversion could be different, though. It might be how many people subscribed to your podcast if that’s the call to action. Watching your conversion rate will tell you how well you are ’selling’ your call to action.

This metrics depends on the earlier metrics. If the earlier metrics are good, naturally this metric will improve. This metric also depends on the marketer’s value proposition, attractiveness of the offer and meeting the needs of the customer.

8. Visual Reporting: Providing metrics like clicks visually on your HTML message itself, provides much greater visibility on the performance of your creative in the eyes of the recipients. The marketer can visualize where the interests of the recipients are more or appealing depending on the clicks. The marketer with this knowledge can optimize the creative further for future campaigns.

9. Time Distribution: Do you get to know how are your recipients reading your message over the different hours of the day or days of the week after the message was sent out? Can you recognize a pattern?

The marketing message is all about relevance and timing. Do you want send a campaign that sits in the recipient inbox for hours before they read? It would have lost its timing if it not sent at an appropriate time, when the recipient will have just an hour in the morning 10 AM to read all his personal mails. In today’s world, if your email is not in the first page, then it may not be read at all. With so much spam escaping filtering or irrelevant mails in the inbox, the marketer has to know the recipient reading and clicking behavior during the time of the day and day of the week. The marketer can appropriately time the message during the day or on a particular day.

Hence working with an email marketing software or provider who provides all the relevant metrics for measuring the success of your email marketing campaigns is absolutely essential. The metrics provide you with all the data to measure the success and returns from your campaigns against the money you spent.

In the recession economy, it doesn’t make sense to waste your money and effort on executing marketing campaigns that doesn’t yield results you need.

# # #

Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has many many years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands across the world. Aghreni brings a world class email marketing platform to the marketers to effectively measure their email marketing campaigns and reap success.

For more information, visit URL http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

End to End Email and Mobile Marketing automation Solutions and Services for Marketers

2009-02-23T09:24:00.000-08:00

Aghreni Technologies, that is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business is offering e-messenger, email and mobile marketing automation platform that can send high volume emails and mobile messages with high deliverability.

Team Aghreni has over 4 years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world's largest brands. Aghreni's email and mobile messaging platform called e-messenger services over a 900clients in Europe, Asia and the USA.

Aghreni's platform is a hosted solution and it takes less than 48 hours to get on the platform for the first campaign.

Moreover Aghreni's platform is the most economical to use. The platform guarantees inbox deliverability with major ISPs (hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc.). The platform is easy to use, integrate with Clients backend CRM, ERP and other systems and moreover, Aghreni is the only large scale professional company to provide local support in India.

In addition, Clients will be working one of the most advanced and feature rich platform and deriving benefits like high quality of email deliverability, which only the biggest global email service providers can guarantee.

Aghreni with its partner RupeeMail (http://www.rupeemail.in) brings in doubly opted-in customer database of customer profiles across India to Marketers in India for acquiring customers.

For more details, visit URL http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

# # #

Aghreni Technologies Private Limited is a provider of email and mobile marketing automation solutions and services to clients world-wide. Aghreni Technologies has many years of experience with leading global companies in the world and managing marketing campaigns for global brands. Aghreni is spear-headed by a senior team of highly qualified and experienced professionals from online marketing industry including Manjunatha KG (Managing Director), Ram Krishnaswamy (Head Business Solutions) and Raghunandan Mysore (Head Infrastructure and Operations). The company aims to provide end to end solutions and services for marketers for customer acquisition, rentention and loyalty.

Email Delivery Optimization Techniques from Email Marketing Solutions Provider - Aghreni Technology

2009-02-23T09:22:00.000-08:00

There is a misconception with marketers and providers that email marketing software is a bulk mailing solution. When the emails are blasted out of a bulk mailer, they are assured that it will reach the recipient’s inboxes. Is that so simple?

Does your email marketing software or service provider guarantee email delivery optimization?

Certainly most do not!

There is a misconception with marketers and providers that email marketing software is a bulk mailing solution. When the emails are blasted out of a bulk mailer, they are assured that it will reach the recipient’s inboxes. Is that so simple?

Let us look at some of the email deliverability myths that most marketers seem to have.

1. We don’t spam!

2. We send emails only to opt-in lists

3. Someone has blacklisted us for no reason

4. ISPs (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL) treat us badly

5. If our emails reach recipient’s junk folders, we will request recipient to add us to safe lists

We don’t send Spam!

The marketers first need understand the definition of Spam! It is not just the Viagra or the porn stuff! Any message that doesn’t suit the need of the customer is spam, whether it is the message subject line, content, broken or dodgy HTML code, relevance, frequency of the emails, etc. Moreover, messages that do not comply with CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003) act may be classified as SPAM by receiving ISPs.

Marketers have to stop sending messages that are boring, mundane and uninteresting. Marketers need to check if their messages are CAN-SPAM compliant. Marketers have to monitor their campaigns reports like opens, clicks, spam complaints, and abuses from their customers and ISPs. If they don’t, they may be surprised to see sometime later, their messages are being categorized as SPAM and lying in junk folders or being blocked by ISPs.

We send emails only to opt-in lists

Sending email campaigns to opt-in lists is a good practice, because you are assured of good deliverability. But have you given control to your opt-in customers, the power to opt-out or unsubscribe in each campaign? If you haven’t, start doing it now. Even if you have given the power to opt-out or unsubscribe, are you acting promptly within a reasonable time (with one week) to stop sending further email campaigns? Have you opted them again, after a reasonable amount of time through another promotional campaign? Are you acting on bounces and taking action to get your list cleaned out of bounced email addresses? Are you educating your opt-in subscribers, to opt-out instead of complaining to ISPs about abuses from you? Are you capturing the opt-in subscriber preferences to send relevant campaigns that suit their interests and the frequency of email campaigns in a given period?

The success of keeping your list clean and emails reaching out to your opt-in customers lies in understanding the needs of the opt-in subscribers, measuring the success of each email campaign and working to address the issues above. If you don’t, even your opt-in customers will soon be opting out or complaining you to ISPs on email campaigns as SPAMs.

Someone has blacklisted us for no reason

Emails Marketers have to understand that email communication is being heavily abused by spammers around the world. For every genuine email sent, there are 90 others which are spam. Most of the email service providers and companies are putting tough measures to block spam emails reaching their infrastructure or for processing and storing Spam emails and damaging their employee productivity. There are service providers who constantly scout for spammers, monitor their activities on the web and maintain a list of their IP addresses (blacklist). They provide various companies the blacklisted IPs, to block the email senders from that IPs. The black list service providers employ various complex and advance techniques to monitor increased email sending, patterns, and their web crawlers checking various things on their servers, and etc. to collect lot of statistics to classify them into the blacklist.

Hence Marketers need to understand the challenges if they are using their own bulk mailing solutions and constantly monitor if their IPs are blacklisted by any service providers. They should take immediate action, if needed with those service providers and get their IPs white listed.

ISPs (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL) treat us badly

Most of the opt-in customers have their email addresses on the major 4 ISPs Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Hence Marketers will be sending a bulk of their emails to these 4 ISPs. They have to ensure that their emails are getting delivered to recipient’s inboxes on these ISPs. Why should these ISPs block the marketer’s emails? They have several reasons and some of them have been stated earlier. Most of the ISPs provide free email infrastructure to their customers and hence they need to optimize their email infrastructure. They have to protect their recipient’s privacies and their reputation as the best ESP in the world.

The emails in those ISPs may also bounce for various reasons like account deletion, inbox full, etc. The sender email server or the email service provider has to remove these bounced addresses from the next mailing; else the ISPs may treat you as a spammer and deny service.

Major ISPs such as Google, AOL and MSN/Hotmail provide their users to complain on the sender of the emails or domains. The ISPs also have strong authentication and dynamic filtering mechanisms that your email software and service provider have to deal with.

If your email marketing software or email service provider doesn’t implement the authentication response mechanisms, adjusting to the filtering policies of the ISPs and dealing with the abuse complaints, there is no reason to complain against their unfair treatment!

If our emails reach recipient’s junk folders, we will request recipient to add us to safe lists

This is a myth that marketers have! If they request the recipients to add the sender email address into the recipient’s safe list, then the messages will be reaching the inbox. While this may be true, it still doesn’t address the deliverability of the sender emails.

ISPs will deliver the email to the recipient’s inbox after their server has successfully received the email, passing through white listed sender IP reputation, authentication mechanisms, dynamic filters (which are changing every moment).

Then there are other questions that marketers need to understand?

1. Does the marketer always use the same send email id for sending different promotions? Is there a need to use different email ids for different e-mail communications like newsletters, campaigns, promotions? What about from different brands or departments in the company?

2. Do you see a recipient adding every marketer’s email ids into the safe list? What is the guarantee that you will not start sending irrelevant and innumerable email communications to the recipient?

If you don’t have answers for most of these questions, then this trick will not work in most of the cases. The marketer is back to seeing his email moved to junk folders and soon deliverability takes a hit.

Email Marketing is a disciplined process and in order to get it right and realize the benefits, Marketers have to work with companies and agencies who really understand the science and art of email marketing.

If not, there will no differentiation between your marketing campaigns and the spammer’ campaigns. Ultimately the recipient’s and the ISP’s are the better judges.

Hence it is very important to measure the success of each of your email marketing campaigns.

Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has over 4 years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands across the world.

For more information, visit URL http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

The Internet Audience in India can't be ignored

2009-01-13T23:58:00.000-08:00

In a Panel discussion under Campaign India at Bombay, leading marketers, media and agency heads discussed the internet as the medium of marketing, when the economic slowdown is squeezing the marketing budgets.

The interesting things to take note were that financial services, travel, and FMCG sectors are already using the digital marketing. The digital marketing has been a great hit with these sectors and they will increase the spend.

The internet medium provides a measurable and action oriented performance and accountability for the marketing investment. It also provides a deeper engagement with the consumers.

Automobile sector is shifting to digital media from the traditional mass media.

The panelists noted that the target specific data is still not available in India and the performance is being captured at the campaign level.

For more details on the panel discussion, please visit URL http://www.campaignindia.in/news/the_internet_audience_cannot_be_ignored

Use Email and Mobile Marketing to increase Customer Loyalty

2009-01-10T09:56:00.000-08:00

It is increasingly becoming a necessity to keep customers informed on your business to gain their loyalty for repeat business and recommendations, in the face of current economy. While there are traditional mediums for marketing the business in local newspapers, magazines, billboards, television or radio spots, these mediums are very expensive costing several lakhs of Rupees every month or year.

There are online tools like email and mobile communication mediums that provide cost effective media for marketing campaigns, from limited-time specials, new product or service offerings, coupons, birthday or anniversary offers, seasonal items, newsletters, customer surveys and special or discounted pricing to entice customers to return. It is also a conduit for data collection - the more information a company has about its customer base, the more clearly it will understand its client demographics, purchase behaviors and shopping habits. In turn, the company can utilize the knowledge to market more effectively in the future.

Email and Mobile marketing can provide excellent benefits to business.

1. It Increases customer loyalty: E-mail marketing can grow brand awareness, strengthen customer relationships and encourage trust.

2. It Saves money: E-mail marketing eliminates the costs associated with traditional direct mail—such as printing and postage—and costs significantly less than other forms of traditional advertising.

3. It Improves customer contact: Since e-mail marketing is turn-key, a business owner can send messages and updates to customers more frequently.

4. It Provides trackable results: The number of individuals who open and read the e-mail, and the number of e-mails forwarded, are only a few examples of what statistics can be tracked.

5. It Offers targeted content: Businesses are able to segment their database to provide specific clients with targeted messages based on their tracked results.

6. It Generates action: E-mail promotions and offers generate immediate action, whether through sales, click-throughs, inquiries, registrations, etc.

Some tech-savvy business owners elect to do email or mobile marketing on their own, however, there are many firms that specialize in email and mobile marketing as well. The benefit to outsourcing your campaign is that companies specializing in email and mobile marketing are able to provide superior technology (such as a custom graphic design and detailed tracking results) and better results. Simply stated, if an individual uses their own mail engine or a mobile gateway to deploy an email or mobile campaign, they can encounter problems with deliverability, tracking, creativity and design capability.

With an email or mobile marketing specialty firm, you are assured that:

Your emails and SMS messages are delivered. What is the sense in sending out an email or SMS campaign if it does not reach the end-user? With spam continuing to rise, specialty e-mail marketing firms provide advanced deliverability tools to ensure that an e-mail campaign has high deliverability rates and is less likely to be categorized as spam or junk mail. In addition, e-mail marketing companies have relationships with various mail engines (such as AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, MSN, Comcast, etc.) to help get your message to an inbox. Also your providers works with mobile gateway providers and telecom operators to ensure that the SMS messages are received by the mobile phones.

Your mailing list is segmented. E-mail marketing specialty firms have the ability to segment a list based on the information you provide, whether it’s the date of a client’s last visit, his/her birthday, etc. This function is critical because it allows you to target specific segments of your list, which enhances the likelihood of a return.

* Your e-mails are custom-designed. E-mail marketing firms can design a template that is creative and appeals to the look and feel of your salon. It is important to provide a consistent image to clients.

* Your campaign is automated. Each e-mail provides the end-user with an opportunity to unsubscribe automatically—requiring little to no maintenance for you. Moreover, new clients will be automatically included on the master e-mail list.

* Your e-mails are tracked. E-mail marketing firms provide comprehensive tracking reports, including details such as who is opening the e-mail, what is being clicked, who is unsubscribing, who is subscribing and more. Tracking is critical because it gathers data that will help pinpoint which campaigns and promotions are most effective.

If you do decide to hire a firm to take care of your e-mail marketing needs, be aware that there are two types of companies available—full-service and DIY. A full-service firm handles all aspects of an e-mail campaign from custom design to list management to detailed tracking reports. The DIY model gives you, the salon owner, more control because you are in charge of choosing from among the e-mail template designs provided by the company as well as maintaining your own client lists. Of course, there are benefits to both models and it is suggested that a business owner finds the company that is best suited for his or her specific salon needs.

Aghreni is a full service provider of email and mobile marketing software, solutions and services to Indian business.

Top Ten Mobile Marketing Predictions for 2009

2009-01-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

On ZdNet, Mark Brill posted a blog about the future of Mobile Marketing. He predicts top 10 trends in mobile marketing for 2009.

Asian Countries like India and China are leading the world in adoption of mobile phones. The next revolution after internet adoption in the world, is the adoption of cell phones. Emerging economies of India, China, Brazil and Russia provide the biggest opportunities for marketers using mobile as the next medium of targeting consumers.

1. SMS will continue to grow both for alerts and short message marketing.

2. Bluetooth Marketing will grow for proximity marketing in malls or busy shopping areas.

3. More QR (Quick Recognition) of bar codes through cell phones

4. MMS will grow, through the use of rich marketing content through pictures and video advertisements.

5. Mobile couponing and Ticketing will increase

6. Location based services with SMS will take off

7. Mobile internet overtakes PC based internet use, with the availability of faster speeds through 3G services

8. Mobile Payments will take off

9. Mobile security will become an important issue

10. Targeted and Niche Advertising will grow.

Aghreni is a customer centric ROI driven provider of email and mobile marketing software, solutions and services.

Email Marketing Trends

2008-12-31T10:09:00.000-08:00

Every business using email marketing is trying to improve the relevance of using the media for managing the returns on the investment made towards email campaigns. Email marketing itself is finding its relevance by more targeted communications, moving away from email blasts.

The key trends are:

1. Targeting: Email list segmentation is increasingly being used as the best practice to improve the relevance and targeting of selected customers. The businesses are making a conscious effort to capture increase demographics and purchase behavior information of customers to create multiple, highly customized lists.

2. Personalization: Businesses have understood the value of personalizing their email marketing communications, using salutations, first and last names and personalizing the messages using the stored demographic and purchase behavior attributes of the individual.

3. Deliverability: Deliverability concerns persist among businesses of all sizes. Leading Email Service Providers continued to address the deliverability of the email communications of the businesses, by including automated CAN SPAM compliance checks, dedicated deliverability personnel, relationships with third party deliverability services such as Return Path, employing Dynamic Message Transfer Agents (MTAs) and working with ISPs closely to integrate authentication mechanisms.

In addition, the email marketing service providers worked with businesses in supporting and advancing email marketing best practices, by maintaining clean lists and improving email relevance with better targeting and personalization tactics.

4. Email Automation: Businesses are looking for designing, creating and conducting automated trigger email campaigns. Leading email service providers are providing life cycle based event and time based triggered email communication to consumers. This will greatly enhance the experience of the consumers through relevance and timing.

5. Integrated Campaigns: The rise of SEO, SEM, Mobile, Social Media and Social Networking have made business to look for closer integration with email marketing campaigns with SEO, SEM, Mobile and Social media tactics. With businesses adopting CRM and lead generation systems, email marketing is getting integrated into these systems for better targeting and personalization of email communications.

6. Hygiene Lists: Lingering concerns about deliverability will make businesses to scrub their email lists and subscriber data. Economic pressures for improving performance across all marketing channels will contribute to this trend, in addition to the need for clean when integrating email marketing with CRM and lead generation systems.

Aghreni Technologies is a customer centric, ROI driven provider of integrated email and mobile marketing solutions and services to indian businesses.

Online advertising is the biggest driver of brand engagement for retailers

2008-12-28T07:14:00.000-08:00

IAB research shows online ad spend achieves 40% of the communications effect within the media mix for retail brands. Online, press and TV are the strongest drivers of brand engagement within this market.

The latest Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) cross-media Brand Engagement study has found that online advertising for retail brands delivers the biggest effect in the media mix, driving 40% of brand engagement, compared with press (31%) and TV (19%).

The average online ad spend for all five brands in the study was just 2.5% of total media budget, which suggests that internet advertising – which delivered 40% of brand engagement across all communications – is around 16 times more effective than the monetary investment would suggest. To put this into perspective, in the second half of 2007, the retail sector accounted for just 5% of all internet advertising expenditure, whilst total consumer spending on products, goods and services online for 2007 was £47 billion.

Aghreni Technologies is customer centric ROI driven provider of email and mobile marketing solutions and services to Indian Marketers.

Aghreni brings in several years of working experience with global leaders in email and mobile marketing and marketing campaigns for leading brands.

Are Indian Marketers adopting the best practices in email marketing?

2008-12-21T07:13:00.000-08:00

I am receiving newsletters from the various agencies and companies who are into online marketing over a couple of months.

As a professional worked for large global online marketing companies and their clients who manage global brands, I see Indian online marketers are still at a nascent stage in using the media.

Looking at over several newsletters, alerts, marketing campaigns from several companies, I observe the following issues.

1. Target Selection
Segmenting the customer profiles based on demographics, preferences and purchase behaviors is not being done by Indian marketers. Indian Marketers send every customer everything they want to sell or inform. What it means to consumers? Spam! Consumers stop reading the messages, ignore them or classify it as spam.

Hence Marketers have to change their traditional mindset from mass advertising through print and electronic media when they want to adopt to online marketing. Selecting your target audience and carefully positioning your offering is more important than mass advertising.

2. Personalization
Email Marketing provides better personalization features for each individual. Email itself is meant for one-on-One communication. However most of the Indian Marketers tend to ignore it and send non-personalised messages, as though they are sending the message for masses.

Not addressing the recipient in the message doesn't create any relationship or value to the consumer. The first thing marketer has to do in direct marketing is to develop the relationship, before he could even offer him anything.

3. Message Content
Direct Marketers have to pay special attention to the content in the message. The content has to bring out clearly the value proposition, excite the consumer and create interest in your offering.

When looked at the content being sent out by Indian Marketers, they fall into 2 extreme mindsets. One is very simple text messages and other rich images. Both are bad. Simple text messages doesn't convey everything the marketer has to convey. They can't create much interest in consumer minds. Sending graphic images requires high bandwidth and many ISPs block images. It may take several minutes to download the image before reading them.

Rich HTML messages with judicious use of text, images and links can provide a compelling interest with consumers. They are easy to read and when consumers need more information they can click on any link and visit the marketers website for more information. The message sizes are also optimal. The consumers can start reading the text in the messages, even before the images are being rendered on the email client.

Marketers also get rich metrics on opens, clicks on all links, and landings on their websites and further web site analytics through the navigation of the consumers on the websites through the landing pages. The landing pages further can be optimised for creating more interest with offers, etc.

4. Giving the control back to Consumers
When I looked at the messages sent by Indian Marketers, very few provide the option to reply back to a reply-to address, opt-out, send viral marketing messages, putting the physical address of the company/marketer who is sending the message, change preferences, etc.

According to CAN-SPAM act, any message not following the rules for message content will be classified as SPAM. The ISPs may bounce such messages, block the sender domain from sending emails or put it in spam folders. What it means to Direct Marketers, is that their deliverability (number of emails delivered to consumer inboxes/total number of emails sent) will suffer.

5. Email Frequency
Some marketers flood emails in a day thinking consumers will read all of them, just like the 30 second ads that get repeated on TV every 5 minutes. While Television viewers have no option, rather view them, but thanks to new devices like Tivo can allow to skip the ads, online consumers have the power to delete or move those to Junk/Spam folders without even opening them. This may land the marketer in trouble, as ISPs will now treat the senders as Spammers, because their readers are not reading those messages.

Hence Indian Marketers have to start listening to consumers on how many messages they can read in a day/week/month. If a particular message has been sent, when can they send the same message again if it is not opened or clicked? or even can they send an other offer, if another offer has been sent earlier and if so, after how many days?

6. Deliverability
Deliverability of emails sent by senders is very important, as it a measure of how many consumers received the emails in their inboxes, vs. sent. Deliverability depends on many factors, the list hygiene (correctness of email addresses, valid ones, etc.), the sender reputation, the message content, the consumer's behaviour, senders relationships with major ISP's etc. It is largely a collective responsibility of sender (list hygiene, opt-in lists, message content, etc.), email marketing solution provider (reputation, capability of handling bounces, sending messages to ISPs through various techniques enforced on them, throttling the email sent per hour, setting the frequency of emails sent to each consumer, relationships with ISPs to address deliverability and Abuses, Tracking options, powerful reporting features) and Consumer behavior (interest, spam, etc.).

However Indian Marketers tend to think their deliverability will improve if consumers are asked to put the sender email id into safe sender list. Consumers will not approve or guarantee to give control to senders to send anything. Moreover, it doesn't guarantee deliverability as there are other issues that the sender and the email service provider have to adhere to.

Hence, Indian Marketers have to take this responsibility on themselves and adopt best practices from both the senders and email service provider's perpsective.

7. Lead Generation
Indian Marketers have to move from the traditional mindset of creating mass awareness that was being done through traditional media when migrating to online marketing.

Online marketing provides better opportunities in not only creating brand awareness, but also in lead generation. Anyone visiting the marketers or company website is a prospect and his/her contact information has to be captured. Most websites today are just iconic in India and have no provision to collect email addresses. When company websites, start collecting information about visitors, they are building a powerful customer database, through which they can keep in touch with periodic newsletters, offers etc. and building a loyal customer base.

Through Viral Marketing (forward to friend) features, marketers can enhance their lists in a exponential way.

There are plenty of opportunities for Indian Marketers to nurture and grow their customer base, only if they adopt best practices in email marketing.

Email marketing is a powerful tool and if not used in the best way can also damage the reputation and sales of the marketers.

Aghreni Technologies is a provider of customer centric, ROI driven email marketing solutions and services to Indian Marketers and clients. It has many years of working with leading global companies and clients in email marketing and lead generation.

For more information, visit http://www.aghreni.com

You can get the most out of email marketing by tailoring to target

2008-12-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

A recent study by a team of computer scientists at the University of California looked at the response rates and profitability of professional spammers.

By hacking into the Storm network, which has control of over one million home PCs, to send out junk e-mail, the researchers took control of 75,869 hijacked machines to conduct their own fake spam campaigns.

The researchers used two popular ploys used by spammers, first offering a fake pharmacy site and, secondly, offering a Viagra-style remedy to boost libido. It seems the only way to measure spam is to become a spammer.

‘‘After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted,” said the research paper. That means a response rate of one in 12,500,000 people take up the offer of the scam, giving the fraudsters a conversion rate of less than 0.00001 per cent.

These response rates would seem to suggest ham-fisted spammers, but once you consider the scale on which some of the scams operate, it is clear that, in this case, quantity wins out over quality. The researchers estimate that the controllers of a network the size of Storm are still bringing in about $7,000 a day or $3.5 million over a year.

There are two lessons that marketers can learn. First, it is important that the intended consumer response is defined at the planning stage of a campaign - what do you want the consumer to do? It could be just seeing your brand and its message, perhaps a click through from a banner ad, an opening of an e-mail, time taken to read or watch a piece of content related to your brand, an opt-in to receive more information.

Each response should be given a relative weighting so that an overall value can be assigned to any campaign. This rarely happens, but is not difficult to do. Web and e-mail analytical tools, such as Google analytics, will provide a certain amount of information, but more qualitative methods - such as simply asking users and customers their opinion on the campaign - will provide more meaningful insights to their response.

So the second consideration is that people will respond only if they believe there is something in it for them, so brands must clearly define the consumer benefit attached to any response. What will they get in return for clicking, watching or registering?

Furthermore, by adding a level of personalisation to the communication can increase the likelihood of a response.

Aghreni Technologies is a provider of customer centric, ROI driven online marketing (direct email and mobile marketing) solutions and services to Indian clients. It has many years of working with leading global companies and clients in email marketing and lead generation.

For more information, visit http://www.aghreni.com

Worsening economy sends marketers looking at online medium

2008-12-21T06:45:00.000-08:00

Economic Times reports that, during this worsening economic period when both print and electronic mediums see a dip in advertisement revenues, google said it is still seeing money flowing into online marketing initiatives. Advertisers are now looking at cost effective mediums to reach the target audience.

Google said 'Usage of the online medium as an advertising platform is increasing in the economic turbulent time. One of the reasons is that the medium offers the advertisers the flexibility to reach the right kind of users. The slowdown in the economy has forced the advertisers to creatively use the medium to their advantages, not just branding, but also for generating leads'.

Aghreni Technologies is a provider of customer centric, ROI driven online marketing (direct email and mobile marketing) solutions and services to Indian clients. It has many years of working with leading global companies and clients in email marketing and lead generation.

For more information, visit http://www.aghreni.com

Marketing for Corporate Training

2008-12-15T22:17:00.000-08:00

Running training like a business implies marketing training like a business. But a recent study of 75 training leaders by expertus reports that a minority of corporate training departments have written or formal marketing plans, budgets or promotions that go beyond general awareness of their courses. This study reveals what those with more sophisticated marketing do to target their audience and measure their reach, and which marketing activities they find to be most effective and favorably-received by employees.

Email blasts have been the most effective marketing activity followed closely by phone calls and recommendations.

Not surprisingly, print newsletters and mail are at the bottom of the list, which seems to be a direct result of the increased reliance on email and websites. In fact, anything that requires paper or printing is at the bottom half of the list.

Aghreni Technologies is an offshore provider of email and mobile marketing automation solutions and services to clients in India and world-wide. Some of the best global companies utilise the depth and breadth of marketing automation software, solutions and services of Aghreni.

http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

Aghreni Technologies will offer Best of Email and Mobile Messaging solutions and end to end services to Indian Companies

2008-12-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

Aghreni Technologies Private Limited, a leading Email and Mobile service provider based out of Bangalore, India is bringing a top selling european email and messaging platform to Indian Marketers.

Team Aghreni has over 5 years of experience in email marketing, working with some of the world’s largest brands. Aghreni’s email platform called e-messenger services over a 1000 clients in Europe, Asia and the USA.

Aghreni is one of the focused Email Marketing Solutions and Services provider, serving reputed clients from various industry verticals both in India and abroad.

Aghreni works with world leaders in Email marketing and Mobile Marketing companies in the world to bring best of the practices in marketing communications to its clients.

Aghreni Technologies has its development and registered officeoffices in Bangalore, India, and business development offices in NY and NJ, USA.

Aghreni's e-messenger platform provides a flexible and reliable solution for clients to professionally plan, implement and control their bulk mailing to subscriber base.

e-messenger has an easy to use interface and can be easily integrated into client's CRM and web site.

The platform has over 900 clients systems and more than 800 million emails and SMS messages sent monthly. Leading companies with high email and SMS broadcast volumes trust the performance and reliability of e-messenger, web based email marketing communications software.

By taking advantage of Aghreni email marketing software, clients will benefit by receiving detailed real time reports, the option to personalize message and current best practice advice from experts. With features that include comprehensive ‘Bounce Management’ and automatic de-duplication, Aghreni can ensure client’s emails always reach the inbox safely. In addition, Aghreni also have a specialist team dedicated to taking care of all aspects of ISP relations.

For more details, please visit Aghreni's website http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

Mobile Advertising is Surrounded by Myths

2008-12-02T04:51:00.000-08:00

According to eMarketer, mobile advertising is a huge growth area with a global compound annual growth rate of 48%. However, despite the rapid growth forecasts there are still a few industry concerns about mobile advertising.

Shaun Gregory, CEO, Blyk UK, shares his views about the mobile advertising industry, consumer preferences, content and context of ads etc., in an article in the mobile reseller magazine Mobile Today. A summary of what Shaun wrote in their blog in presented below.

Shaun believes that the various concerns related to mobile advertising, such as optimum quality and delivery through small mobile screens, lack adequate support for rich media, mobile push advertising considered spam, and choice of technology, etc. are all myths surrounding the mobile advertising space. Citing the example of Blyk, the ad-funded UK-based MVNO that has more than 2,000 campaigns to its credit in just over one year of business, Shaun writes that they have learned some valuable lessons about how to be successful in mobile advertising.

Shaun Gregory, CEO, Blyk UK
He wrote that relevance and predictability make the difference when it comes to effectively using push communications strategies. Push strategies used as an initial conversation entry point are effective as they open up a dialogue.

When it comes to advertising on mobile brands, Shaun writes, the following should be considered:

- Put the consumer first – mobile advertising has to take basic user experience into consideration, since mobile phones are functional and personal devices.
- Consider timing and context – one of the beauties of mobile advertising is the timing element.
- Do not plan mobile advertising on a reach and frequency basis. Instead, build frequency through engagement, re-engagement and relevance.
- Mobile advertising works alongside other channels as part of an integrated campaign and should be built into media plans.
- Value exchange – I will cite Blyk as an amazing example of value for both brands and members. For brands, we offer an effective and efficient channel to create awareness, build engagement, drive sales and gather insight. For members, we offer free communication, entertainment, social currency, exclusive content and an opportunity for them to give an opinion.

For more details, please visit URL
http://mobile2mobility.com/mobile-advertising-is-surrounded-by-myths-says-blyk-ceo/

Aghreni Technologies Private Limited is a leading Email and Mobile service provider based out of Bangalore, India. Team Aghreni has over 4+ years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands. Aghreni’s email platform called e-messenger services over a 900+ clients in Europe, Asia and the USA.

The email platform has over 900+ clients systems and more than 800 million emails and SMS messages sent monthly. Leading companies around the world, with high email and SMS broadcast volumes trust the performance and reliability of e-messenger, web based email marketing communications software.

Fore more details, please visit URL http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

Benefits of Direct Marketing, Database Marketing, Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Permision based Marketing

2008-11-28T05:15:00.000-08:00

Direct Marketing can bring many benefits to both buyers and sellers, whether it is employed as a complete business model (like in the case of Dell Computers) or as a supplement to a broader integrated marketing mix (like in the case of Hewlett-Packard of Sony).

For buyers, Direct Marketing provides convenience, easy to use, and private way of interacting with Sellers. Buyers from the comfort of their homes or offices can browse mail catalogs or company websites at any time of the day or night. Direct Marketing gives buyers ready access to a wealth of products and information, at home and around the globe. Direct Marketing is immediate and interactive – buyers can interact with sellers by phone, chat or emails or on the seller’s website to create exactly the configuration of information, products, or services they desire, and then order them on the spot.

For sellers, direct marketing is a powerful tool for building customer relationships. Using customer databases and insight into customer data, marketers can target small groups or individual consumers, tailor offers for individual needs, and promote these offers through personalized communications. Direct Marketing can also be timed to reach prospects at just the right moment. The internet is a great tool for direct marketing as it provides interactivity, one-to-one communication, access to global markets and measurability.

Direct Marketing is a low cost, efficient alternative for reaching to customers through its lower costs of media, and reaching to customers over internet.

Aghreni Technologies Private Limited, Bangalore, India has several years of experience in building Direct Marketing platforms and solutions and providing direct marketing services over email to global clients. Aghreni is bringing in the best practices of permission based email marketing to Indian Marketers at affordable costs.

For more information, visit URL http://www.aghreni.com

What is Direct Marketing or Email Marketing or Interactive Marketing of Database Marketing?

2008-11-28T05:09:00.000-08:00

Direct Marketing is a marketing process where companies market to carefully targeted individual consumers with an appropriate, relevant and timely offer or message using one or more advertising media to obtain an immediate and measurable response or transaction.

Direct Marketers communicate directly with customers, often on a one-to-one,interactive basis to build and cultivate long lasting customer relationships.

Direct Marketers use detailed databases where they understand customer’s demographics, attitudes, preferences and purchasing behaviors. With this knowledge, they tailor their marketing offers and communications to the needs of narrowly defined segments or even individual buyers.

Direct Marketing is also referred to as Interactive Marketing or Database Marketing, because it is expected to be two-way communication with the customer or prospect and it is database driven, where the database contains customer demographics, attitudes, preferences and purchasing history & behavior.

Beyond brand and image building, Direct Marketers usually seek a direct, immediate, and measurable customer response. With digital advertising mediums and e-commerce websites, it is possible to effectively track and measure customer responses, if the customer looked at the offer, responded to the offer by seeking more information, visited the marketer’s e-commerce website, or placed an order, etc.

Early direct marketers used catalogs, direct mailers and telephone calls. They gathered customer names and sold goods mainly by mail and telephone. Today, with the advance in database and computer technology, direct marketers are using new marketing media – the internet. Internet provides several mechanisms - email, web advertisements and affiliated websites to drive customers to marketer’s website or stores for sales.

Aghreni Technologies with many years of building direct marketing systems and managing them are bringing the benefits of measurable marketing campaigns to marketers in India for better managing their marketing investments for generating greater sales.

To learn more about Aghreni's direct marketing solutions, visit URL http://www.aghreni.com/business_solutions_em.html