ExactTarget has developed a tool that allows marketers to monitor and manage the content of transactional e-mails such as shipping and purchase confirmations.
By taking a task normally managed by the IT department and handing it to marketing, ExactTarget claims its new tool may open up a slew of branding and selling opportunities.
The new tool also apparently addresses a much more basic need.
Though companies routinely send so-called transactional or relationship e-mails to confirm purchases, notify customers of shipments, or to respond to other events in their e-commerce and CRM systems, most have little or no little or no ability to track their performance, according to Scott McCorkle, vice president, technology and products for ExactTarget.
“The first issue this addresses is sheer visibility, to be able to see what transactional e-mails are being sent and for what reason,” he said. “Are they bouncing? Are they reaching recipients? Are there ISP issues? Many organizations have transactional e-mail systems tied deeply into their legacy systems that don’t provide this type of visibility today.”
Also, marketing usually has little or no control over the content of transactional or relationship e-mails, and often a simple change can mean having to go to the IT department, he said.
“What we’re seeing is that organizations would like to manage that class of e-mail with the same sophistication that they manage marketing e-mail,” said McCorkle. “We’re giving marketers a consol to manage this without technical involvement.”
He added that giving marketing departments the ability to control the content of transactional e-mails will create new cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
“From a marketing perspective it really is the ultimate one-to-one situation because you have a specific individual who has just performed some specific activity that you know about that allows you to be highly relevant in whatever you say to that person next,” he said. “If an individual has initiated an action, presumably they’re going to be highly interested in that e-mail coming back to them and they’re going to open it. We believe these are missed opportunities today.”
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