Perhaps the first thing to make clear in this article, is that it’s not about traditional ‘email marketing’, where an organisation might use email as a marketing channel for a specific promotion. Nor is it about ‘spam’ email, where an unscrupulous operator dispatches millions of unrequested emails to addresses they have no legitimate right to communicate with. Instead, it’s about the hundreds of emails organisations routinely dispatch every day to customers, suppliers, business partners and a host of other interested parties.

For the most part these emails are already ‘permission’ based. Their recipients expect to receive them and view the sender as a trusted source of relevant content. Despite this, however, the vast bulk are sent in plain text. No corporate identity or branding, no disclaimer statement, no personalised design and no embedded cross-selling links to products or services the recipient may be in the market for. In terms of missed marketing opportunities, it sits at the top of the list for most businesses today. The recent launch of mailPrimer from Calcium, however, aims to turn the weak link in an organisation’s communications mix, into a strength.

Flexible and easy to use, mailPrimer ‘primes’ plain text emails by placing them in customised HTML templates. “By using mailPrimer in their day-to-day communications,” says Calcium country manager David Lynn, “organisations can bring their offl ine corporate identity and branding online, reinforce their brand’s differentiation and unique value proposition, create cross-selling and information-sharing opportunities and track their emails – enabling them to use email as the effective marketing channel it has the potential to be.”

Easy operation
Centrally managed, Lynn says mailPrimer allows the marketing or IT department of any sized organisation to fully regain control on the look and feel of their emails, while maximising their ROI on sales and marketing investments. “It’s simple to use,” he says. “Someone just writes an email and sends it as they would normally. There’s no software to install and no training required. The email is simply redirected to mailPrimer (which can be either installed by a company, or hosted by Calcium) before it is sent on to its fi nal recipient.” mailPrimer automatically:

• Reflects the sender’s corporate identity and brand
• Personalises the email with the sender’s name and up-to-date contact details
• Protects it by adding an appropriate legal disclaimer
• Applys one of potentially different email template designs crafted according to audience segmentation
• Adds dynamic links to aid cross-selling and / or an information sharing opportunity
• Tracks all of the above and generate metrics reports, delivered to the user’s inbox upon request.

A number of organisations have already adopted the mail-Primer solution, including the Direct Marketing Association and Workchoice Trust. As a nonprofit organisation, Workchoice Trust implements programmes aimed at helping senior students with career choices and the transition from school to the workplace. A big part of the Trust achieving its objectives has been its annual Workchoice Day, where 9,000 students from around the country visit 450 businesses from every conceivable industry sector, to get a ‘feel’ for life in the working world.

With a staff of only five people (located in Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown), the Workchoice team manage Workchoice Day - coordinating the visits of two groups of 20 students to each employer organisation – a total of 900 different fi eld visits to arrange. To pay for this mammoth undertaking, the Trust relies on the support of sponsors and individual employers to run its programmes.

A costly exercise
In addition to its big day the Trust is responsible for all the preparation work including printing promotional material, sending out invitations to organisations, registering participating companies, and distributing letters to over 1,500 businesses – in short, a mass of paperwork. Traditionally every organisation was sent a personalised letter containing a colour, eight page newsletter and registration form. The Trust’s main expenses have been the printing of the letterhead and newsletter, the cost of envelopes and postage, and staff time to collate all the material.

The Trust needed a solution that could replace this costly method of communicating. It decided to investigate sending to all businesses via email; however Workchoice Trust national manager Kathy Williams was concerned that email typically lacked uniformity in brand, fonts or signatures. “I felt that emails from the Trust’s various offi ces would differ in layout and look and there would be no consistency of image,” she says. “And it was important that we communicated to these organisations in a way that retained the formality of sending a personalised letter with the Workchoice branding.”

The decision was made to implement mailPrimer to provide a corporate identity consistent with the Trust’s off-line branding. Major bonuses of the new solution were that mailPrimer would also track emails, provide clickable links to sponsors sites - and save time.

May 2004

Email can easily be utilised as a one-to-one marketing opportunity 
Calcium CEO, Gael de Kerdanet

With mailPrimer

Without mailPrimer

Effortless implementation
The Trust purchased mailPrimer in October 2003. According to Williams the implementation was fast and seamless. “There was no software to install on the Trust’s computers,” she says, “and no staff training was required so there was no disruption to the way our email was sent out. We just type up an email and address it and mailPrimer places it into our Workchoice designed template which includes our logo, address details and links to our sponsors’ websites.”

But equally as important as ease of use, she says mailPrimer ensures email is seen as a formal means of communication. “As each email is personalised just like a physical letter, the recipient feels like they are being communicated with directly,” she says. “From their point-of-view it’s a one-to-one marketing communication – which is good for us because we didn’t want the Trust to be seen as sending out junk email.” A plain text version of the primed mail message is automatically presented to recipients who cannot receive emails containing images – ensuring that every person who is sent an email by the Trust can open it and view the same content regardless of its presentation.

Enhanced brand management
The Trust can now centrally manage its brand and marketing messages with every email sent. Mail-Primer automatically primes every email by placing it in a customised template based on its profi le or the specifi c audience segment it’s communicating with. This means that each of the Trust’s three offi ces can have mailPrimer templates customised to their requirements – showing their unique physical address, telephone number, signature and protective disclaimers – just like having individual letterheads.

Furthermore, the whole system is centrally managed so the Trust can confi gure mailPrimer from any of its three locations, using a secure web browser.

Adding value for clients
“Giving value to our sponsors is critical as their support ensures Workchoice Day continues,” says Williams. “So each individually addressed email package sent out contains hyperlinks to sponsors’ websites and mailPrimer provides complete measurability. All emails sent and links clicked are automatically tracked. This gives invaluable feedback to both us and our sponsors as the return on the investment can be directly measured. mailPrimer also saves our sponsors money, as organisations that decide to take part in the Workchoice Day simply register online rather than fi lling out a form by hand and paying to post it back to the Trust as was required in the past.”

Return on investment
Implementing mailPrimer has had several major benefits. Firstly, the Trust has realised communication cost savings of around 50-60%. The solution has eliminated the need to print lengthy, coloured collateral – and saves on envelopes and postage and turn-around time. Additionally, staff time spent on non-productive administrative tasks has been halved, so more time can be dedicated to soliciting sponsorship and encouraging new organisations to participate in the programme. “We’ve stopped the paper chase,” says Williams. “mailPrimer can provide information on what time an email arrives in the recipient’s mail box, what time it was opened as well as which emails don’t reach their destination. This means that there’s no time wasted sending out another letter, or photocopying every letter we send out.”

For more information
www.workchoice.co.nz

David Lynn
Calcium Software
09 920 1404
david.lynn@calcium.co.nz
www.calcium.co.nz / www.mailprimer.com