Getting personal

In the fight for attention in consumers’ cluttered inboxes, knowledge can be what makes your e-mails stand out from the rest – the more personalized, the better.

CampaignerPro, the latest one-to-one e-mail marketing software from Montreal-based GOT (whose clients include Yahoo!, AT&T and PricewaterhouseCoopers), allows marketers to get personal with minimal effort. It has a user-friendly interface that lets marketers manage their permission-based e-mail lists themselves, segment lists and even generate their own creative for email campaigns. It’s able to do complex segmentation to generate personalized, dynamic content, and has automation capabilities to enable one-to-one dialogues with consumers.

‘We can send triggered messages,’ explains client Chris Mowry, president of Lakefield, Ont.-based e-mail solutions agency Be Appearing. He points to a recent offer he did for one of his restaurant clients, which offered customers a ‘take a friend to lunch’ deal, and encouraged them to forward to a friend. When they did forward, they received an automated response with another discount.

The software, which is web-based and hosted from a central server, is able to track how consumers interact with e-mail offers, and present data in user-friendly formats, enabling marketers to analyze it without having to export the data. CampaignerPro can integrate information from existing databases, and export data. It’s built for marketers, not IT folks, so it’s easy to use.

Mowry, who handles e-mail marketing for small businesses in the retail, restaurant and professional services categories, has been using a beta version of CampaignerPro for the past year. He says he’s found open rates go up significantly with increased personalization – in some cases he’s seen jumps from 60% to 90%. He adds that the software allows him to collect and use details even as personal as a pet’s name (for his veterinarian clients).

CampaignerPro is just hitting the market now, and is sold on a subscription basis starting at $1,700 per month, which includes use of the software, hosting on the central server and tech support.

Set-up fees can be as low as $1,000, but vary depending on factors like amount of training required and integrating existing CRM applications. www.campaigner.com