Streamlining processes for ease of Email marketing

[lily10]

Hi
Being totally non technical I'm looking for some advice on the best approach here and /or any suggestions for streamlining some of the processes we are currently running!
We recently upgraded to Actinic V9 Business so that customers would be able to use coupon codes in the shopping cart. ( but we have not yet communicated with customers to offer these - this is what we want to move to)
For some time now we have asked customers when in the shopping cart for permission to email them but we have not yet set up email lists/messages.
We ask them via a radio button ( Yes please / No thanks)

We currently take orders in 3 ways - some clearly come in via the site ; others come in via the phone and the details for these are taken manually; others are from walk in customers.
ALL orders ( whether via Actinic or by phone or customer visit) are entered into accounting system Quickbooks. Within Quickbooks there is no indication of whether the customer has agreed to be emailed or not - this is only evident within Actinic but clearly not all orders are put through here.

What we want to achieve is this:
1) When a customer clicks the radio button to agree to emails , we want to send an automatic email to them straightaway verifying their opt in.
2) We ALSO want to capture details of their purchase.
3) We also want to be able to add customers to the email list who haven't put their orders through the site ( ie over the phone or walk in)

But we're not sure quite clear on how to streamline this whole process - I'm sure that we are missing a few tricks here! We have signed up with Aweber email marketing but are quite confused as to whether we are overcomplicating this whole thing. Presummably we need the opt in for emails + purchase details to sit in some database somewhere where we can then select different customer groups for different messages?

Any suggestions based on experience of this would be really appreciated!
Many thanks
Juliette

[pinbrook]

Try reversing your thinking to allow your email marketting facility handle this for you rather than actinic.

is in the checkout of actinic replace you existing code with the code to sign up to the managed email with adweber (although i dont know how you will get purchase detail)

over the phone/walk ins you will need to do manually yourself via adweber interface

[Mike Hughes]

I agree with Jo. If you've identified an email system you want to work with then the best thing to do is use that as your primary system and figure out how to get the data you need into it.

It's relatively easy to get data from actinic into an excel spreadsheet. The key thing to decide is which data you want and how it needs to be structured / formatted.

Mike

[fergusw]

Collect and collate all email addresses into one email marketing solution database
e.g. from these 3 main sources:
- Actinic order customers, those that have selected the "Privacy check" field (in V9)
- Those submitted directly through a subscription form on the website (has to be added to your site manually)
- Those you enter manually

Make sure the email addresses that you collect always have an unsubscribe option and a double opt-in (especially the 2nd and 3rd options)
Manage all the subscribers and unsubscribers in one database (your email marketing database) and append to this database as and when required e.g. from an Actinic Marketing List export as previously mentioned.

Your main challenge is how to integrate the order process with the automatic sending of an opt-in message, unless you piggy back this on the order receipt email by default.

[musicscotland]

I've found Your Mailing List Provider very good in practice, support very good, value for money:

http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/

http://www.musicscotland.com/cd/musi...ment-list.html

[jont]

Collect and collate all email addresses into one email marketing solution database ..... and append to this database as and when required e.g. from an Actinic Marketing List export as previously mentioned.

This is the way I do this - keep a simple database filled with names and email addresses merged from different places - it keeps maintenance to a minimum. Leave your sales data in Quick Books. If QB doesn't hold the opt in details export the marketing info from Actinic first into your email database and then the QB import second with a check for duplicates. Instruct your sales team to ask permission to add users to the email database.

Requesting verification after spending money and ticking agree to opt in seems unnecessary - the point of double opt in is to prevent people submitting email addresses of "friends" to bulk email lists. If you have trusted someone with your credit card, home address, phone number and ticked a box that should be sufficient... you can change your email address but you can't move home that easily if you want to stop junk arriving.

[guccij]

I have a bit of a complicated set up, but it works extremely well.

My host 1and1 has a newsletters tool.

Using the export function in Actinic, I dedupe, sort by opt in/out, then export the remainder into 1and1.

Over the years, the 1and1 database has become the main list. As newsletters have unsubscribe links, it remains up to date and can be added to and exported back off-line whenever. Customers who change their details on their next order, e.g. opt out when previously they were opted in, are picked up in the deduping process and removed.

Previous to us switching to Actinic, we used our parsed email database which showed the opt in/out. We still use Email2DB for some order processing and accounting purposes.