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Café & Bakery Email Markeng Strategy Email markeng has consistently been cited as the single most effecve markeng tacc for awareness, acquision, conversion, and retenon.Alans Café & Bakery aims to encourage repeat business by staying in touch with guests, and drive new business using targeted campaigns to connect with new guests. Service Provider Recommendaon Hannah Davison

Alan's Report2

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Page 1: Alan's Report2

Café & Bakery

Email Marketing Strategy

“Email marketing has consistently been cited as the single most effective marketing tactic for awareness, acquisition, conversion,

and retention.”

Alan’s Café & Bakery aims to encourage repeat business by staying in touch with guests, and drive new business using

targeted campaigns to connect with new guests.

Service Provider Recommendation Hannah Davison

Page 2: Alan's Report2

Alan’s Café & Bakery Alan’s of Atlanta, a Deli, Bakery and Confectionary, aims to provide a quality and reliable experience to every customer we serve. Serving a wide range of people every day from retail breakfast & lunch clients, a variety of catering options, and specialty confectionar-ies for important events. The passion behind Alan’s comes from providing each guest with a unique experience suited to them. In order to accomplish all of this and keep con-nected with our growing customer base, its imperative to choose an appropriate email marketing service that can keep up.

Objectives & Needs Maintain Alan’s quality, reliable, and

friendly brand while using the growing sec-

tors of the business to expand and develop

new customer relationships.

With Alan’s split into so many special-

ties it is imperative the business connect

with individual customer segments about

their Alan’s.

Target Audience Alan’s target audience includes:

Loyal customers

Lunch crowd

Specialty Item customers

Catering customers (specifically office ori-

ented)

Local brides to be

Email Marketing Strategy The email marketing strategy of Alan’s Café & Bakery aims to encourage repeat business by staying

in touch with guests, and drive new business using targeted campaigns to connect with new guests.

To encourage repeat business, we need to connect with our customer base we currently have,

providing email content that drives them to do business with Alan’s:

Loyal customers will receive email notices about “best customer events”, Menu Specials of the

day and the ability to place their orders online. These emails will be sent out twice weekly, spe-

cifically to our fishbowl database of 200,000

Our repeat catering customers will receive offers about catering holiday events, their business

picnics, etc. & also reminders about catering options for 10 + people

A special email will also be sent out each month, to customers who have purchased a specialty

item, in order to remind them of the anniversary coming up for their purchase

To drive new business, Alan’s has purchased a bridal mailing list for brides in Atlanta from our con-

tinued participation in the Great Bridal Expo. We will send these brides special emails advertising

wine and cake tasting parties to continue growth with our wedding and event cake section.

Brides will be segmented by wedding month and sent 12 emails per campaign.

Page 3: Alan's Report2

Features Comparison:

Segmentation:

Price:

Send Better Email. Sell More Stuff. Powerful Email Marketing, Made Simple.

Looking at two email service providers, MailChimp and Constant Contact, an in-depth analysis and comparison will prove which provider is best for carrying out our strategy based on its features, ca-pabilities and price.

Constant Contact will cost $895 per month for 200,000 subscribers with an unlimited number of emails per month. Package: Plus Mode

MailChimp has a scalable pricing plan & will cost $875 per month for 200,000 subscribers with a 2,400,000 cap on emails per month. Package: Growing Business

Alan’s current customer email list includes, the 200,000 email addresses collected in store (separated by location), the purchased mailing list of local brides, and the emails of those customers who ordered specialty items.

The cost of the two providers is relatively similar, with MailChimp costing $20 less, but Constant Con-tact allows for unlimited emails per month while MailChimp caps the emails at 2.4 million.

Emails will be segmented by the type of customer and their trends. For our lunch crowd, an email will be sent out twice weekly to generate repeat business. Brides will be segmented out based on their Wedding month and sent 12 emails throughout the course of our Bridal campaign. For customers who have purchased specialty goods with Alan’s before, an email will be sent out each month reminding them the anniversary of their day is fast approaching and Alan’s is here to help celebrate!

Preset Automation Workflows

Including Retail specific workflows, cus-tomizable workflows and date-based auto-mation workflows.

Each individual email in a series is gov-erned by its own unique trigger event, seg-mentation conditions, and post-sending list action.

AutoResponder tool

Allows email series setup for similar custom-ers and scheduled send outs, can include existing and added customers.

An unlimited number of series with unlim-ited emails within the series can be set.

Set up birthday and anniversary emails to send automatically.

Both Automation tools work to better connect with the customer through setting up series of auto-mated emails based on different customer sets. Constant Contact’s version is simpler and more straightforward, while MailChimp’s tool is much more powerful, customizable, and intuitive with pre-sets that would work extremely well based on Alan’s segmentation objectives.

Page 4: Alan's Report2

Reporting:

Easy to Use Interface:

Email Tracking Tools include:

Engagement Report Revenue Report Contact Growth Report Mobile email open rate

-Integrate data from range of apps & services -Complex, flexible API documentation -A/B Testing (test email campaigns in a sample group) -Extensive engagement reporting capabilities:

Subscriber Activity Reports: Revenue Reports Opens by location Bounce Rates and Why Unsubscribes Industry Comparison

In order to make certain the email marketing strategy is being effective in the right ways, smart and powerful reporting is necessary. A full strong, powerful analytics package should show what is work-ing, what is not, and the opportunities to make things better.

In terms of reporting, MailChimp offers superior services. With more in depth engagement reports and the ability to easily integrate data from other services and providers MailChimp is able to provide a more holistic view of email impact. While Constant Contact definitely provides engagement infor-mation, its is much more a tracking tool than a reporting tool, versus MailChimp which provides track-ing, reporting and ultimately better data.

Alan’s is recognized throughout Atlanta and beyond as being a quality, reliable and friendly place to do business. With such a strong brand, the email service provider chosen must be able to showcase Alan’s in a professional, visually appealing, yet simple manner, provided by an easy to use and navigate Interface.

Email Designer tool allows for drag & drop, ability to replicate and reorder blocks, and adjust layout. Built in photo editing Collaboration with team members. Intuitive file manager Automatic link checker (shows screenshot on hover). Predesigned templates Code your own templates with HTML and inline CSS template Screen Size adjustability (mobile)

Email Editor tool allows for drag & drop Access to library of stock images Social integration Large variety of pre-designed templates HTML email templates (intuitive & easy to use) Screen Size adjustability (mobile)

Both providers have easy to use designer/editor tools with drag/drop capabilities. While Constant Contact has a library of stock images, MailChimp has built in photo editing and an intuitive file man-ager. Each provider would be able to develop a professional email campaign but MailChimp has spe-cific features that would allow Alan's beautiful, quality products to be best showcased.

Page 5: Alan's Report2

Customer Service & Support:

Other Tools:

Phone, chat, and email support offered Mon-day through Friday for business hours & email support on weekends

Helpful resources:

-Recorded video tutorials -Community Forum -Local Seminars and Training available

Self Support Knowledge Base: Searchable

knowledge base with articles and infor-

mation about services.

Support Chat: Monday through Friday

Support Email: 24/7

In order to make certain the email marketing strategy is being effective in the right ways, smart and powerful reporting is necessary. A full strong, powerful analytics package should show what is work-ing, what is not, and the opportunities to make things better.

The clear winner for customer service and support is Constant Contact. With resources online, over the phone and in person, Constant Contact ensures they are there to help if its needed. MailChimp offers email and chat support along with online articles to help.

Two secondary areas to analyze for both MailChimp and Constant Contact are their deliverability, getting the emails to the right place at the right time, and also their mobile applications.

Deliverability: In terms of deliverability both providers have a high rate of success, with constant contact at 98% and MailChimp at 99%. Constant Contact provides a built in spam check tool to ensure messages aren't di-recting there versus the customer’s inbox. MailChimp boasts bounce management to detect potential delivery issues.

Mobile App: Both service provider offer mobile apps. While Constant Contact has an all in one app that allows you to do pretty much everything you would need to, MailChimp further splits their capabilities into three apps. For Alan’s, MailChimp Subscribe would serve us very well at our locations in store to streamline the fish-bowl email collection process.

Constant Contact’s mobile app allows you to create, preview and send emails from your phone. It also allows you to track results and add people to your emailing list.

MailChimp has multiple apps. MailChimp Mobile allows you to manage email lists, add subscribers, send campaigns, and view reports. MailChimp Snap allows you to send simple, photo based emails from your phone. MailChimp Subscribe is specifically for collecting email addresses, even offline.

Page 6: Alan's Report2

Comparison Summary MailChimp and Constant Contact match up consistently as two of the

best email marketing services available for small and growing businesses. Alan’s

started out small but it is continuing to grow. The purpose of this in depth analy-

sis was to pit these two providers against one another specifically concerning

features, tools, price and usability. MailChimp beats Constant Contact in terms

of price, though by a slim margin. As for segmentation capabilities, a very im-

portant aspect in email marketing success, MailChimp is the more powerful of

the two while Constant Contact remains a bit too simple for the segmentation

needs of Alan’s. Reporting wise, both service prepare engagement reports with

real tome data but MailChimp simply has the more robust analytics package

with a lot of added features that can provide a holistic view of how email cam-

paigns are performing and well, why they may not be, and what they could do

to perform better. Both provider’s interfaces are easy to navigate and relatively

intuitive for yielding such good results. Though for Alan’s use, MailChimp is

more focused on the use of personal pictures, versus constant contact’s vast

stock image library, which would not showcase Alan’s beautiful, custom crea-

tions in the same quality. Customer Service is really the only are where Constant

Contact is able to truly surpass MailChimp. Constant Contact really does stick

true to their name, keeping their support centers open, constantly ready for

contact. Though these email service providers are two of the best out their, the

other tools & features really set them apart from one another in terms of special-

ties and themes. Constant Contact remained simple and straightforward while

MailChimp demonstrated more powerful capabilities in several of the sets of

criteria analyzed.

Page 7: Alan's Report2

Final Recommendation:

Send Better Email. Sell More Stuff.

After closely analyzing MailChimp and Constant Contact on their price, seg-mentation capabilities, reporting power, interface usability, customer service, and other features, while keeping in mind Alan’s specific email marketing strategy based off its business objectives and needs, MailChimp will be the most appropriate and effective choice for email service provider.

At $875 a month, Alan’s will be able to utilize MailChimp’s preset automation workflows to properly segment out the lunch crowd of 200,000 emails, the brides to be, and our specialty item customers into different workflows where every series operates using different triggers events, segmentation conditions and post sending list actions. Once these segments are set up, Alan’s can also take advantage of the robust analytics package MailChimp provides, including their A/B testing, where we can set up several marketing campaigns send them out to sample groups and test how they do compared to one another and for what reason. The reporting tools also allow connectivity to all relevant social media platforms and CRM databases for better insight. MailChimp is the better service provider for Alan’s especially because of its capabilities for storing images and on site editing. Alan’s creates beautiful, cus-tom pieces, its imperative we can showcase this is a seamless, professional way. Though the customer service does not include phone calls, any question can reach an answer by first searching the database and then contacting the helpdesk via email or chat. MailChimp Subscribers is another great feature that will upgrade Alan’s. By providing an instore, professional way to collect email addresses we can increase cus-tomer connection while ditching the old fishbowl method.

MailChimp and Constant Contact are similar providers in terms of quality and reputation, but the aforementioned capabilities make MailChimp the preferred email service for Alan’s café & Bakery to connect with our current customers and to reach new customers.