When it comes to e-mail marketing, Web shop owners want intuitive interfaces and solutions that offer analytics and user data in an easy-to-digest manner. When you get to the heart of e-mail marketing, there are so many rules to follow and options available that many small business professionals become overwhelmed and wind up opting out.

However, if you find the right type of service, you will be able to collect and organize important customer data, and at the same time, ensure your e-mail marketing campaign is set to offer the maximum conversions. You should also be able to keep improving your conversion rate as you send out each new campaign. Here we highlight features of SalesGenius, an e-mail marketing service that can help you do just that.

E-Mail Marketing with Many Extras
SalesGenius is one marketing platform that offers small online store owners an affordable way to correctly and efficiently send those important e-mails to customers and prospects, and in return, it provides reports on the opens, clicks, bounces, and other important details about the campaign. SalesGenius differs from other online hosted solutions in that you are also provided with detailed reports on the actual Web site visit.

Reporting for Duty: SalesGenius. (Click for larger image.)

Once a customer clicks any link to your site from the e-mail, the pages they visit, how long the visit is, and other relevant data is also collected. More importantly, you can view the customer's Web visit in real time through the SalesGenius dashboard. Called the "Genius Tracker", it is an instant messaging-like, real-time view into how your e-mail recipients are responding. In an instant messaging application you would see your IM contacts appear in the client window. With Sales Genius, the IM-like interface actually shows your prospects' presence on your Web site.

David Thompson, founder and CEO of Genius.com, said that this feature allows a company to make more money by leveraging the Web site they have already invested in. "When you see prospects on your Web site it gives you the insight to their current interests to better sell products or services — at the time they are showing the interest."

Success Story: Using Sales Genius for Inside Sales and Leads
One client who had success using SalesGenius is Print Runner, an online printing service headquartered in Chatsworth, California. Nine years ago, Print Runner started as a company offering commercial services. According to Dean Rabbani, Print Runner's co-founder and vice president of sales, now around 80 percent of Print Runner's business is done through online orders.

E-Mail Marketing made Easy with SalesGenius. (Click for larger image.)

For the past two years Print Runner has taken advantage of the SalesGenius Tracker, where previously the company used the Microsoft bCentral platform for their e-mail marketing. Rabbani said the problem with their old marketing platform was that they were unable to find out important customer data, for instance, who opened the e-mail and who visited the site.

When Print Runner made the switch to SalesGenius, he said it quickly became apparent that there was a huge untapped potential in online sales.

Using SalesGenius, a special landing page was setup to direct e-mail recipients to a business card promotion Web page. As customers opened the e-mail and clicked through to the promotion page, the Genius Tracker alerted Print Runner's inside sales staff of the Web site activity. The landing page offered a form where direct orders could be placed, but just as importantly, as some users navigated away from the business card landing page to view brochures and other products, the sales staff was alerted to those extra sale opportunities that they could follow up on.

The real value for Print Runner, said Rabbani, is that it allows the inside sales team to follow up and make more relevant pitches to a narrower field of prospects — just those interested in the product.  "Before, with bCentral we would just send out an e-mail at the first and third of the month and see that customers would get aggravated by getting the random e-mail," he said. "Now we get fewer disqualifications because our promotions are sent to the people who need a specific product at a specific time."

The Genius Tracker also enables Print Runner's sales team to make a more informed decision about prioritizing sales calls, based on the prospect's interest as it is shown to them through their Web site visit.

No IT Knowledge (or Fat Wallet) Required
Even better for Web shop owners is that you don't have to make any changes to your Web site. You simply provide the links to your Web store, and SalesGenius transforms your links into "Genius URLs" to allow deep tracking of your Web site without any programming or any site changes. Also, because this is a SaaS platform, you need only your browser to use SalesGenius.

An individual SalesGenius subscription costs $49 per month. It includes unlimited access to all SalesGenius features: e-mail open alerts, Web site visit tracking, page-by-page instant replays of each Web site visit, and detailed reports on contact activity and sent e-mails. You get up to 500 recipients per month included with a subscription, unlimited storage of contact records and e-mail results reports. There is no limit on the number of URLs that can be tracked. SalesGenius offers a free, 15-day trial that you can find at their Web site.