Business emails have changed beyond recognition and the emails you generate from SAP must evolve for you to realise the opportunities now available.

Email as a delivery mechanism

Traditionally email has been used to replace posted communication:  It was in this sense the delivery mechanism; the receptacle within which the ‘physical’ business document was carried.

To this end, the business document was included as an attachment: typically a PDF attachment, so that it could be printed by the receiver.

Organisational branding had focussed on the PDF output, and often the accompanying email was plain.

The SAP output solutions also focussed on the PDF output document.  Changes to both the document and the email content have to be managed by IT, and can be complex and slow to deliver.

So typically the email content did not change very often and wouldn’t include personalised content, marketing information, latest news, promotions and links.

Email as the business document

In the new world the email is the document of record. Recipients are able to save as PDF or print if they wish, or just save the email to a file server.  There is no longer any need to include a separate PDF attachment.

So it follows that the branding focus must now be on the email content rather than a separate output document: the email becomes the SAP output in its entirety.

The challenge is now to provide the development tool to push SAP data into the email, and provide a design tool to enable email templates to be maintained quickly and easily.  This is exactly what Floe does.

Now we are able to include links, marketing content and personalised content dynamically, and change it quickly without the need for IT involvement.

So whereas the email used to simply be the postman, now it’s the letter too: This is the new business reality. If you are still using email just as a delivery mechanism then there are many opportunities you are failing to enjoy!

Deliver an exceptional experience
Your customers and employees require and deserve a first-rate experience, with rich graphical content and the information presented in a way that’s easy to read and understand.

This can involve personalisation where content is included or excluded dynamically for each particular recipient.

Inform and educate
Every touchpoint with your business communities provides the opportunity to inform them about your organisation, your market, your products, your performance, job opportunities etc.

Provide extraordinary service
Each time you communicate with your customers you have the opportunity to offer more. Provide links to resources to make things easier for them; provide a ‘gold standard’ that will keep them coming back.

Reinforce your brand
Every communication point with your business communities provides the chance to reinforce your brand through consistent use of logos, fonts, colours and other styles.

Build a fan club
As social media provides such an important part of your marketing communication, every email you send can be used to share content and links to help build your fan club.

Offer promotions and incentives
The vast majority of marketing emails are simply not opened or read. But business communication like order confirmations, shipment updates and payment receipts are read every time: This makes them enormously powerful mechanisms for reaching customers to offer sales promotions.

Champion your values
If you’re trying to change the world; if you’re trying to disrupt a market, then you need your contacts to see the world as you do. Every communication inside or outside your organisation provides a unique opportunity for you to own the conversation and push your key messages.

Drive website traffic
You might spend a huge budget on marketing campaigns to drive website traffic.  But by including content and links you want to share on every business communication you can run a permanent traffic generation campaign for free.  Every SAP business document can be a newsletter too.

‘Every SAP business document can be a newsletter too’

Floe helps because it solves the SAP email double-bind:

  1. Emails in SAP are plain
  2. Emails in SAP are difficult to maintain.

With Floe you can replace SAP outputs (SAPScript, SMARTFORMS and Adobe Forms) with pure email content, then enable your business users to change that content easily and regularly.