Whether planning to reach your target audience by phone, fax, direct mail or e-mail, here is a quick checklist of questions to ask youself to ensure a successful campaign.

1. What is the desired outcome of this campaign, in terms of customer acquisition, retention or penetration? (i.e., do we want to get prospects to sign up for promotional offers, enter a contest, purchase a product, or simply heighten general awareness?)
2. How will we integrate the campaign into our larger sales and marketing objectives? (e.g., part of larger effort to retain best customers, promote cross-sells, increase knowledge of customer behaviors, or grow customer base rapidly.)

1. Whom does the campaign target? (i.e., existing "active" customers, "inactive" customers, new prospects)
2. How well do we know our audience, and how will we gather additional information? (e.g., individual profiles, segmentation, buying behavior)
3. What is the best way to reach our audience and create a relationship with them? (e.g. house opt-in customer list, trade show prospects, newsletter sponsorships, permission list marketing)

1. What resources (internal and external) will we need to execute e-mail campaigns? (e.g. software, services, budget, staff)
2. What are the appropriate e-mail marketing technologies and which ones yield the "biggest bang for the buck"? (e.g., dynamic message assembly, trackball URLs, data mining, HTML-formatting, streaming multimedia).
3. Should we make or buy a permission e-mail marketing capability?
4. If appropriate, how do we select the right vendor solution?

1. How can we best measure campaign success? (e.g., click-throughs conversion rate, cost of acquisition, life-time value)
2. What measurement technologies can help us (e.g. campaign management, data mining, marketing analysis)
3. What are the best practices for capturing and leveraging customer information? (e.g. customer registration, behavioral tracking, collaborative filters, privacy policy) Source IMT Strategies 2000