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Evaluate Professional Email Marketing Services Capabilities

Does your provider or product vendor have a professional services group or does it rely on your internal IT group or outside system integration services to install its product or integrate its technology platform? The quality of professional services groups varies widely and the vendor’s own team is often not the one best suited to implement your email marketing solution. When evaluating professional services organizations, look for the following:

• An emphasis placed on professional services by the vendor (as opposed to your sudden realization that you need help implementing the vendor’s solution).
• Depth and breadth of services offered.
• Detailed domain experience that maps to the problem your are attempting to solve and products or technology you have chosen.

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Is email direct marketing an industry unto itself? Not at all. The principles of service-based marketing and communication are essential to the success of any online marketing initiative. And email is a mission-critical tool that plays an integral role in the e-marketing and communications mix for all online merchants. But as we’ve touched on earlier, email itself is just one of a large number of electronic communications channels that e-marketers will be using in the future. Furthermore, marketers ultimately won’t want to manage relationships with a large number of different service providers.

That may be why there have been so many industry consolidations. Netcentives acquired Post Communications in order to broaden its technology infrastructure and provide a wide range of relationship marketing services, from customer acquisition programs and customized email relationship marketing programs to loyalty programs and promotions. Continue Reading »

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To keep the franchise agreement manageable and to avoid the unacceptable burden of renegotiating the agreement in response to frequent changes in day-to-day operational requirements as far as possible, it is customary to state only the principles according to which the franchise relationship will be conducted. This will be supplemented by a proviso stating that detailed operational requirements are set out in a series of written directives issued by the franchisor and delivered to the franchisee in the form of the operations and procedures manual.

Moreover, the franchisor will reserve the right to issue updates to the operations and procedures manual from time to time, which will reflect changes in operational requirements. As soon as such directives are received by the franchisee, they become binding, just as if they were contained in an amendment to the franchise agreement. Continue Reading »

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