An Interview with Mélanie Attia, Product Marketing Manager for Campaigner Email Marketing

Campaigner, a leading email marketing service provider, recently introduced new features aimed at making their service even faster and easier for small businesses to use, regardless of their level of marketing expertise.

We had the opportunity to speak with Mélanie Attia, Product Marketing Manager for Campaigner Email Marketing, about the new features, new trends in the email marketing and how these will help small businesses to better communicate with their clients vie email.

Would you tell us a few words about yourself and your professional background? How long have you been involved in the email marketing field?

Hi, my name is Mélanie Attia and I am the Product Marketing Manager for Campaigner Email Marketing. My focus for Campaigner is on managing the marketing programs and working with customers and prospects who want to power their business outreach with email marketing programs. I can be reached at [email protected].

One of the things I do regularly is keep a close watch on the needs of email marketers, industry trends, and market developments. With a great appreciation for customer concerns and a keen interest in delivering timely product initiatives and strategic value offerings, I work every day to provide email marketing tools and solutions for customer success.

To download, Campaigner’s free e-book, The Small Business Guide to Email Marketing, visit www.campaigner.com/ebook.

Please present Campaigner to our readers and explain how this service can help them better communicate via email with their customers and prospects.

Campaigner is an email marketing service that brings powerful results firmly within the grasp of small business owners. It’s a great tool to help communicate important and timely information to customers, build relationships and convert prospects into loyal customers and grow your business by staying top of mind with those doing business with you. 

Overall, email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways for businesses to stay in touch with customers and build long-lasting and profitable relationships. This is great news for small and growing businesses, which need to get their messages directly to targeted audiences. It is also the easiest form of marketing to track campaign results and continually refine strategies for the next round of emails. 

What distinguishes Campaigner from the other email marketing service providers and what keeps you ahead of the competition?

There are a lot of things that distinguish Campaigner from other email services. First, we have a stellar staff who understands the product and the needs of our customers. We understand small businesses may not keep regular business hours so we’re available by phone, the web and by email 24/7. We also survey our customers regularly to find out what they’re looking for and new innovations they’d like us to add to Campaigner. Most recently, we introduced new features aimed at making the service even faster and easier for small businesses to use, regardless of their level of marketing expertise. This includes the ability to edit images directly within Campaigner, eliminating the need to use a separate image editing program. Other features include auto-template personalization, allowing customers to include a standard set of information in every email template; the ability to import email addresses from popular email services; and the opportunity to preview emails before sending.

What do you consider progressive or unique about Campaigner’s services?

Our customer service is unique, and it’s progressive. We’re really there when the customer needs us, no matter what time of the day or night. Another difference is that we concentrate on small business needs and ways to reduce the stress. In addition to the new features, Campaigner upped the initial number of contacts from 500 email addresses to 1,000 with unlimited email sends each month without adding to the price. We don’t know of any other email marketing service that is as cost-effective.

Recently, Campaigner has introduced new features aimed at making the service even faster and easier for small businesses to use, regardless of their level of marketing expertise. Would you please tell us more about them.

One of the features I am most excited about is Campaigner’s new integrated editing capabilities. Working with images can be a big time sink. This new feature cuts out the need for additional graphics programs that can be expensive and hard to use. Now, it’s simple to import an image into the Campaigner library and use the powerful image editing features to crop, rotate and resize while building email newsletters.

We also added a new email preview function that allows our customers to test the look-and-feel of emails with one click of the mouse. You can quickly view what an email will look like when it is received by customers, even those who have email images turned off. This allows the customer to refine pictures and make emails more appealing to the eye.

Another new time-saving option is the ability to automatically have business contact information such as company name, email, phone number, etc. appear in selected email templates. This auto-fill feature eliminates the need to enter the information manually each time.  And our customers can now import email contacts from Hotmail, Gmail & Yahoo! to quickly create a database of prospects and customers without manipulating lists, a daunting task for some. Campaigner also automatically checks to ensure no duplicate emails are imported. Permission levels are also maintained after an import.

Would you agree with the statement that email is the most cost-effective marketing tool for promoting products or services, and why?

Definitely. But don’t just take my word for it. The Direct Marketing Association estimates that for every $1 spent on email marketing, shoppers bought $43 in return. Last year we commissioned a survey with Hurwitz & Associates. They found that 46 percent of small businesses surveyed rely on email marketing to help them find new customers, keep existing ones and grow their businesses. They also found that 36 percent of small businesses plan to begin using email marketing over the coming year.

Can you share some email best practices that our readers should be following?

Sure. That’s one of my favorite things to do. Here’s my top five list:

1. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes – Write for your audience. Think about what type of information would attract attention and which coupons and special offers they would click-through on. Often the best email newsletters include a mix of sales with expert opinions and advice.

2. Build an email marketing plan for the year – Again, think like the customer. Map out promotions, topics and campaigns against the calendar, using major holidays as milestones. Investing time up front will dramatically improve the performance of your email marketing campaigns.

3. Start building an opt-in email list – Opt-in means that your customers clearly understand that my signing up they are giving your permission to send them email communications. Use all of the tools at your disposal to gather email information including a quick sign-up form on your homepage, all your web pages is even better. You can also keep a sign-up sheet by the cash register or a jar for customers to drop business cards. Remember, no matter how you collect email addresses, ask permission.

4. Create an email template that reflects your brand image – Think about formatting and how you want the content displayed. Leave plenty of room for images and graphics and try to make the text concise, to the point, and easy to scan.

5. Launch your first email campaign – Kick things off by introducing yourself and setting expectations. Don’t just sell, but also offer valuable information and tips your audience can use. And encourage feedback. An ongoing dialogue allows you to continually gather more detailed profile information to improve the targeting of future campaigns.

Are there email practices that our readers should avoid?

Never forget about the people who are reading your email campaigns. Don’t oversell. Nurture the relationship. Customers who contact a small business are often looking for more than an upsell email. It’s important to send informational emails that keep a customer’s attention until they’re ready to buy. Consider using list segmentation and personalization techniques to feature topics that relate to each subscriber.

To wrap things up, are there any final thoughts about email marketing that you want to share with our readers?

Email marketing doesn’t have to be difficult if you have all the tools in front of you. To help our customers, we developed a free ebook “The Small Business Guide to Email Marketing.”You can download it at www.campaigner.com/ebook. And if you have additional questions or comments, contact me at [email protected].

Thank you very much for taking the time to do this interview!