Experian CheetahMail sprints forward with new tool

Experian CheetahMail today launched Outbound Direct, a tool within the CheetahMail suite of services that lets marketers send personalized emails with measurable results to customers and prospects, said Kat Berman, VP of solutions at Experian CheetahMail.

Outbound Direct is designed to help companies send a consistent message. The tool contains templates that enable marketers to determine when to send personalized emails and the ability to track the results of those messages, said a release.

While Experian's customers had always been able to send personalized emails, Outbound Direct offers more controls around templates and a more accessible user interface, Berman said, giving users more control despite increased scalability.

“Outbound Direct was conceived out of client and prospect need to offer a flexible, easy-to-use system at the field level, while simultaneously retaining central control and management of the brand and messaging,” Berman said. “We analyzed existing tool sets and identified that there was a gap in the market and we believed we could fill the need with a simple, light templating system that included multiple layers of velocity and compliance controls to support the needs of both the individual sending the personalized communication and the corporation behind the brand.”

CheetahMail claimed a 20% increase in email volumes from 2010-2011, and expected to see similar increases in 2012. In a Nov. 2011 interview with Direct Marketing News, Daniel Schotland, Experian CheetahMail's VP of client services emphasized the importance of creativity and consistency. “Personalizing subject lines not just with names, but based on popular search keywords works well,” Schotland said.

Uses for the tool, suggested by Experian, include lead follow-ups, thank-you messages, customer notifications and appointment reminders.

Berman also emphasized Outbound Direct's simple user interface, designed to make it easy to manage, organize and measure email communications across large geographies. The beauty of the tool is in it's simplicity,” Berman said. “We utilized web 2.0 technologies and an open source framework to deliver content, and we leveraged the existing capability of CheetahMail for deployment scalability.”

A handful of CheetahMail clients had already been introduced to Outbound Direct during its pilot phase last year, though Berman declined to disclose the names of those clients.

There is an additional fee for customers wanting to use Outbound Direct, said Berman, which includes an initial set-up fee than a monthly, per-user fee.