I am seeing more and more examples of how smart marketers are using email for customer service. And with today’s generation of APIs (Application Program Interfaces), it’s easier than ever to integrate email technology with database technology to deliver fully automated customer service messages – that are personal and timely – and require no human intervention.

Why more companies do not use email to deliver subscription renewal, billing reminders and other “alerts” is beyond me. It’s just good customer service. And for those companies that do, it is becoming a huge competitive advantage. I don’t have the metrics to support my opinion, but I believe we are getting closer to seeing just how important email is in building relationship equity which in turn builds brand equity.

Here’s a good example.

Last week, I received an email from my 23 year old son, Chris, who is typical of today’s “digital media” consumer who prefers the speed and ease of email. His recent experience with an insurance company serves as a good example of what can go wrong when email is not used to alert customers when their policy is about to expire. Here’s his story:

“I came into the office this morning and realized that my car insurance expired on December 23rd. No email was sent to me from (my auto insurance company) alerting me to the fact that my policy was due to expire and inviting me to renew. This caused me to think about how great it would have been to receive an email with anything in the subject line alerting me to my policy's impending expiration.

This leads to two conclusions about email, one fairly obvious.

1. Subject lines are more important in 2008 than ever. We are inundated with email, and subject lines are being skimmed more and more. There's no longer the necessity to entice the recipient with subject lines, you now must communicate the gist of the message in the subject line.

2. This leads me to my second and slightly less obvious point. No longer is it a perk for us to receive emails alerting us to special offers or information that is timely (like policy expiration alerts)…we now expect it. I have paperless billing for everything. I now expect that when I need to be alerted about something -- of interest or importance -- that I will be informed of via email. In fact, I have come to expect this.

Those of us who work in the field of online marketing understand that today, it’s all about ROI. Is there a better way to generate positive ROI than by retaining an existing customer? For two cents - or whatever the going rate is for email - (my auto insurance company) could have made $960 (I can't wait until I'm 25 for cheap insurance!). I'm not a math wiz, but spending two cents to generate a $960 insurance renewal seems like a pretty good ROI!”