A few months ago I decided to purchase a new car from Ford. At the time I was working for Ford at their UK headquarters in the marketing sales and service department in Essex.
There where many heated debates about email marketing and weather it positively or negatively effects the customer experience and what effect this will have on the business.
After I had finalized the purchase of my new car I was sent a number of conformation emails with digital documents containing terms and conditions etc. I also received an email titled 'Ford really values your opinion', this was a personalized, call to action email with an incentive of being entered into a prize draw to win £2000.
Ford dealerships and their dealership staff get assessed on their performance via a CVP (customer viewpoint survey), this email specified that I had to complete the survey by following a link embedded in the email, the email also provided a password which I would need to use when accessing the survey.
The link it took me to a Ford themed webpage where I could enter the provided password. This action could be improved by instead of accessing the survey via a password the embedded link should log you straight into the survey.
At Ford I was lucky to see both sides of the business internally as an employee and externally as a customer. While I was at work we took email marketing very seriously, it was used as tool to improve our customers experience and therefore improve our retention of those customers.
Seeing the email marketing campaign in action as a customer was a helpful experience as it allowed me to see from a normal customer perspective. This helped me realize that Ford's email marketing positively impacts upon the customer experience because they help keep you updated with information you need to get the most out of your product. This highlights the importance of email marketing to the success of businesses.
