“People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet – how much utility they get out of email, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online.” – Jeff Bezos

Email is still perhaps the best marketing tool available. Not only can you send very targeted messages to your customers, but you can analyze every aspect about it to see what is working. Emails can be personalized, yet totally automated. Email is inexpensive, so use it liberally. Here are just a few of the types of emails that Amazon employs:

• Confirmation email when a sale is made
• Confirmation email when an order is shipped
• Thank you email for your purchase.
• How did we do? Please rate your experience.
• Please review your product purchase.
• Cross-sell emails; we thought you might be interested in X since you purchased Y.
• Sales and Promotions
• Deals and New Releases

And here’s the thing about all of these emails that they send: even though there are lots of them, you don’t feel like they are spamming you or sending you things you don’t want, because they are targeted and personalized just for you. For example:

This is a shipping confirmation email, so you can see that it has my name on it. But Amazon also takes this opportunity to try to sell me something else, even though this is a “utility” email, they turn it into a sales piece. Follow their example and do this for your business.

Greg Jameson