What web or mobile companies are best at lifecycle email marketing?

The following is taken from my book 30 Days To Sell. http://www.30daystosell.com/ --------------------------------- There are some great examples. Hard to say who is the best but here are a few examples from different markets. Email Marketing software MailChimp obviously use email very well when a user signs up and immediately launches into a nine part course showing you how to be an email marketing  guru and use their software. Online Shopping software Shopify send less email but pack in links to their main guides within their welcome mail then prompt a user to buy before their trial runs out. It is great how they introduce your personal account manager Alex and devote a full third of the email to it. They sell the benefits along with the next steps they want you to take. Again Shopify reinforce the personal touch. You can phone and chat about what plan you should buy. Shopify know the power of real people for converting and retaining users.

It's the obvious answer, but Amazon's integrated marketing between email, order-related communications, web targeting (both on and off Amazon dot com) and display ads is impressive. The way they serve search results, especially given their volume of product, and then use that search and web traffic to inform my email content is terrific. The main distraction I find these days is the "eBayization" of their web interface (too many widgets, too many buttons, too many choices for many users) but I still think it's great. B2B-wise, GoToMeeting has done a number of really well-done campaigns that are based on sound user segmentation and content marketing that's relevant for their recipients and where they are in the buying cycle. They have great content marketing that's integrated through email and their social and web delivery as well. From a purely email content perspective, I really like Levi's email marketing. Their product content is very relevant to me (presumably based on past search/browse activity), and stylistically their email marketing is beautiful - very fun and vibrant and brand-relevant and consistent. It has a good combination of price promotions and seasonal launches that make it always seem fresh. There's an Australian online shoe retailer called Styletread who is doing a very good job at becoming the Zappos of down under. Their email targeting is obviously based on my search activity, and so is really relevant, plus combined with great copy. I suspect, but am not sure, that their pricing offers to me are based on my lifecycle stage. Their emails regarding order status feel like they have the same voice as their pure promo emails. They also do good web display ad targeting - their off-site display ads show me some shoe models I searched on most recently, but they also show related shoes that I didn't search for. (Pet peeve: looking at a product, then ONLY seeing that product in all targeted display ads for eternity.) The companies that have done the worst job have been the daily deals / group buying type companies (pretty much all of them) who have no personalization in web or email and blast their daily deal to 100% of their buyers. I don't want a daily offer for random stuff, I want the offers that are most relevant to my interests. Facebook's activation messages for users who have hit dormancy are also inappropriate - try not logging for two weeks, you'll start getting multiple emails per day which IMO is not the way to get someone to re-activate. In my opinion, a straightforward thing any multi-product company can do to improve email marketing is to profile all users based on website/search activity and personalize offers and email content based on that. If I've searched and viewed 200 pairs of men's clothing and shoes on your website, and never searched for babywear, you may not want to send an email to me with your latest babywear promotion, but it happens all the time. (Disclaimer: I'm a cofounder of a company that makes marketing automation software, but these are purely my opinions as a consumer and none of the above companies are customers - yet :)

We are just doing research into and I will update this answer once published. However, in the meantime if you consider lifecycle marketing also read this awesome blog http://paulstamatiou.com/startup-user-retention-lifecycle-email and check out a company I am helping: http://www.totango.com which allows you to create customer segments based on how they are using your products and then trigger lifecycle e-mail campaigns based on that. It integrates with Marketo, Eloqua or your favorite e-mail marketing program.

I am not sure which companies are best at lifecycle email marketing, but I can enumerate a few factors that need to be incorporated into a good lifecycle email marketing system. 1) Send emails as a user becomes receptive to changes in their lifecycle (i.e. send a promo after x number of visits to site or discount after y purchases) 2) Use business metrics (like revenue or engagement) to measure email effectiveness, no intermediary email metrics like clicks or opens. Obviously, this requires using holdout groups. 3) Constantly test and optimize all emails; subject lines, copy, images, calls to action, etc. Pardon the shameless self-promotion, but our service (http://www.trigger.ly) allows you to do all of these things.

Amazon is brilliant at this. OTAs and other econmerce players with a clear buying cycle usually should invest in this.

It seems to me that most of today's e-businesses rely on newsletters to keep a connection to their customers. Amazon is a good example for retail, and LinkedIn for social networking. They start sending you newsletters as soon as you made your first purchase or became a member; provide pushing info. (discount info. or interesting news) to turn you into an active user, and then keep sending out invitations & reminder to get you back when you're no longer passionate about their services. I think email marketing is really a smart move when combining with the customer life cycle model. Just as this article says: http://www.comm100.com/blog/email-marketing-tutorial/why-send-email.html

Right On Interactive automated lifecycle marketing in their platform. I recommend checking them out: http://www.rightoninteractive.com.