When did you last get an email thanking you for flying First Class around the world? Ok, you don’t fly First Class? Well, when did you receive a thank you from a hotel or restaurant? Businesses of all shapes and sizes take our money and often never say thank you for our business. Why not? There may be lots of reasons, including bad manners but it’s unlikely to be because they’ve lost your address.

Airlines, for example, know a vast amount about their customers – name, address, email, phone and credit card details to list a few. Virgin Atlantic charge around £1200 to fly Premium Economy to the Caribbean, but do they ask you how your flight was? No. Could they? Or more importantly, should they? Absolutely! All they have to do is to send a personal email to ask you. They don’t need to do very much to those who give a good rating, but suppose it was poor or average? Wouldn’t a phone call to find out more make a lastingly positive impression?

Personal, 1:1 email is the most underused marketing tool in businesses’ marketing departments. Bulk mail or newsletters blasts, Tweets and Facebook posts all have their role but there’s no medium with greater impact for customer care than the humble hand-typed email.

At Rocketseed, we care as much about personal communications as Chris King, the Customer Manager at Sainsbury’s. We work with our customers to enhance their personal communications to deliver long term results. I bet Lilly Robinson will be the number one advocate for Sainsbury’s for the rest of her life! Good old 1-to-1 personalised communication. Look after customers – they pay the wages!

Let us know what you think…

Here are the entries in no particular order:

1 – Carton House promote their Christmas breaks special with strong call to action.

2 – vitra. showcase their Christmas Market from 5 – 22 December 2011, including trading hours.

3 – Cannizaro House promote their party and lunch packages with a funky design and strong call to action.

4 – tab use their Rocketseed Mail banner to wish their customers all the best over the Festive Season.

5 – Beach Blanket Babylon wish their customers a Merry Christmas and provide a subtle call to action to their special offerings page.

6 – comutanet use Rocketseed Mail to wish their customers a blessed Festive Season and also highlight their office hours during their Christmas break.

7 – City of Joburg provide a critical public service announcement by reminding everyone to buckle up and drive safely during the Festive Season.

8 – The Hempel promote their Christmas party packages on their Rocketseed Mail banner and provide a call to action to make a booking.

9 – Plascon smartly use the premise of colour to wish their customers a happy holiday season. They also provide a click through to more promotions.

Please vote for your favourite banner by selecting the corresponding number from the poll below. The client’s banner with the most votes on January 6, 2012 will be declared the winner.

Our team of professionals are on standby to assist you over the festive season. If you require Rocketseed customer support services during this time, please contact the team in your local area as follows:

United Kingdom

The Rocketseed Office will operate normal business hours until 1pm on Friday 23rd December 2011 and will resume on Tuesday 3rd January 2012.

While our offices are closed:
For urgent queries please call: 0845 881 2290
For non-urgent queries please email: supportuk@rocketseed.com

South Africa

The Rocketseed Offices will operate normal business hours up to 5pm on Thursday 22nd December 2011 and will resume normal business hours again on Tuesday 3rd January 2012.

While our offices are closed:
For urgent queries please call: +27 861 102 491
For non-urgent queries please email: smesupport@rocketseed.com

United States

The Rocketseed Office will remain open as usual throughout the Christmas and New Year period.

For all Queries please call: +1 609 843 0522
or email: supportusa@rocketseed.com

Australia

The Rocketseed Office will operate normal business hours until 5.30pm Thursday 22nd December 2011 and resume normal business hours again on Monday 9 January 2012.

While our offices are closed:
Urgent queries please call: +61 422 295 196
Non-urgent queries please email: supportau@rocketseed.com

That’s multitasking par excellence in these busy times. The secondary survey discovered that the secondary location for these nefarious activities was either on the couch or in bed. I thought both were for sleeping or…..

The point is that email is still the main method of communication these days and wherever we are, we like to be in touch and this of course means that we need smart, easy-to-use tools to view them. Some of us turn our smart phones off at home fearing that he, or she, who must be obeyed will be chasing us morning, noon and night. At least with a tablet you can connect and see what’s happening, and respond at your own convenience.

The next thing is of course that the email has to look good and act smart if it’s going to catch your attention over and above the TV or whatever else is going on in your life or on your couch. Boring text only emails just don’t cut the mustard any more.

Senders smarten up and get yourself noticed in the In Box by looking good and getting my attention.

Clikit Media – the new digital marketing product and services provider boasts a wealth of industry knowledge. Led by Henry Jonker, the team mainly consists of previous Rocketseed employees, their market knowledge and experience alone will ensure a smooth transitional period.

Henry Jonker, Clikit Media’s Managing Director, said: “Our clients and sales partners can expect a personalised and improved service concentrating on individual client needs without any disruption to the quality of our products or service delivery. We have partnered with some of the leading agencies in the country and our clients will instantly experience the benefits. The team will concentrate on strengthening customer relationships, significantly reduce customer service turnaround time and also extend our service offering to include complementary solutions.”

Building brand is something that is achieved over time. Delivering on the business’ mission and vision, and more importantly, building a healthy rapport with clients is a constant process, one that requires hard work and ongoing attention.

Reaching masses of people have been reserved for channels which we’ve perceived as a collective sales and brand building system…prime time television, bulk email (newsletter) marketing, mobile marketing even. These days, social media is probably another channel where businesses see an opportunity to “mass influence” communities as a whole.

We mistakenly assume that when we address masses of people at once, flooding them with our products, services or value propositions, we’ll be building our brand shares. That is simply not true. Without a foundation of core brand values deeply rooted within the heart of your business, no amount of promotion would make your business any more sustainable.

Fortunately, there are marketing tools that help businesses achieve that. Unknowingly perhaps, people fail to realize just how much of the ground work they’re already doing. They devise strategies around building brand, and unknowingly perhaps, neglect to look within to see if there’s anything they can leverage off. Take email for example. With the average employee sending 15,000 emails per annum, the email channel provides the best opportunity for building brand over time, better than perhaps any other communications channel in history.

Together with Rocketseed Mail Email 2.0 solution and proper brand building modules such as Rocketseed Signature Manager and List Builder, we take email, something we do on a daily basis to correspond with existing clients, prospects, suppliers and distributors, to build a strong, reputable brand.

In April 2011 Lurot Brand also started using Rocketseed to promote their social media sites. Inserting interactive icons that link directly to their Facebook page and Twitter feed in every email has enabled them to increase their customer reach and awareness of the service they provide.

Through the use of Rocketseed Mail banners Lurot Brand have received an average click rate of 14.3% over a six month period. The success of these banners has further reinforced Lurot Brand’s commitment to using Rocketseed Mail.

“We realised that investing in our online presence would be hugely beneficial to our business. From the outset of this decision we wanted our emails to also integrate with this approach, and this is where Rocketseed has helped hugely. Rocketseed Mail now helps us to promote our website, mobile sites, and social media with every email we send, ensuring we get a measurable return on investment.” – Peggy Lurot, Head of Marketing

Download the complete case study here (pdf).

The partnership between kihd and Rocketseed reflects evidence that Rocketseed Mail not only allows their clients to profit from every email they send, every time, but delivers a positive impact on customer loyalty and satisfaction levels.

Download the complete case study here. 

Rocketseed List Builder automatically deletes duplicate email addresses leaving you with a clean, up to date database of qualified recipients. Combined with Rocketmailer, introduce prospects to promotional campaigns using an opt in introductory newsletter.

Benefits of List Builder

1. Saves time.
2. Saves money from buying expensive databases.
3. Effortlessly and seamlessly integrates everyday email with your newsletter strategy.
4. Organically grows your database.
5. Lowers the risk of damaging brand reputation. No unsolicited emails.
6. Keeps you connected to your customers at all times.

We often underestimate the time and effort that goes into building highly qualified and targeted databases. Importing and exporting email addresses, duplication, collating and managing spreadsheets can be a cost intensive process.

With Rocketseed List Builder, all you and your staff need to do is to continue doing what you already do every day – sending email. Rocketseed List Builder will silently and automatically build reputable, high quality databases without the added effort.

All this using a channel you already own.

Rocketseed Mail banners enabled them to achieve a click through rate of 9.5% and to deliver 1,950 additional customers. Almost 200 NEW Facebook fans followed through Rocketseed Mail banners alone.

"Our Sales teams and employees send hundreds of emails every day to our customers, and our emails just didn’t look good enough! Plus we were missing so many opportunities to promote our facilities, gain more customer data and ultimately get more revenue from our emails. Rocketseed Mail enabled us to do this." 

Deirdre O’Brien, Director of Sales and Marketing, Carton House.

Carton House – Case Study.pdf