MaryAnn Pfeiffer | Source | Mailchimp Expert & Pro Partner at 108 Degrees Digital Marketing

"On the creative side, inbox visibility comes from three things: the sender, the subject line, and the preview text. These are the three areas where an email marketer has the most control over what happens in the process to encourage brand recognition and open rates. Over years of testing, we’ve seen the greatest lift in the long term with the use of the right sender name.

I encourage clients to use a sender name and email address that is human (not info@, and never no-reply@), which will help your subscriber identify your email campaign with a person (or persona) that resonates with their interests and why they subscribed in the first place. Think about it: if an email from “Alexis from Acme” shows up in your inbox every week, you’ll eventually feel like you know her.

If you do need to use a more generic sender name, try to keep it fun and interesting. Instead of info@, try something related to your products or services. If you’re a bakery, try cupcakes@; or if you’re in the boating industry, try flotsam@ or jetsam@."

"From a planning perspective, we use customer lifetime value (CLV) to help build program budgets and assess campaign results.

It can be difficult for a new business to know the average CLV for their market, as it often takes a few years to understand close rates, churn, and other factors that can affect this number. However, for established businesses, or new businesses with a solid understanding of their industry, the CLV helps to determine a reasonable acquisition cost for a new customer.

Once you understand how much a customer is worth to the business, you can run the math for what you’re willing to spend to acquire new customers. Budgeting something like cost-per-click can seem shocking to some clients, but when they learn the math behind it, such as conversion rates from ad campaigns, close rates with their sales process, etc., it is much clearer that spending money to bring in a highly qualified lead is well worth the expense.

On the assessment side, knowing the CLV helps us evaluate those conversion and close rates to know what messages, campaigns, and creative provide the most qualified leads that will yield the best overall results for a business."

"It’s important to remember that brand loyalty is something that is built over time; it doesn’t happen with a single transaction or engagement with a customer. While I’ve promoted many loyalty programs from a marketing perspective, the best metrics I’ve seen come from a coordinated effort among marketing, sales, and customer service teams to build a consistent and high-quality brand experience from the early funnel stages right through to the post-purchase phase.

Think about what your brand experience should be, and how you execute that for a customer at every stage of their interaction with your organization. By coordinating the expectations set by marketing through the sales and customer service process, you build an experience that will continuously surprise and delight your customers."