Re: Your Outdated Email Strategy
We’re all guilty of it. You wake up, reach for your phone, open the mail app and start deleting the junk clogging up your inbox until just a handful remain. So when it comes to your business, how do you keep your brand’s emails from facing a similar fate? How do you get your customers to actually read the email when so many are competing for inbox space?
The answer is simple, and there’s even data to prove it. Email segmentation, personalization and automation.
Traditional email marketing has consisted of businesses sending large emails to exhausted lists without a lot of strategy behind the message, which leads to low engagement. While there is still some value in sending to a mass list, the most successful email marketing is happening through segmentation, personalization and automation. Adapting your email strategy accordingly has the potential to increase open and click-through rates, increase conversions and ultimately, increase return on investment (ROI). And what business doesn’t want that?
SEGMENTATION
Email segmentation is a technique where you split (or segment) your list based on profile information to send relevant info to specific groups. One study showed 77 percent of email ROI comes from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns. Segmenting a clean and healthy list based on engagement and profile data can provide specific information to customers that meets and anticipates their needs.
PERSONALIZATION
Personalization is more than including a customer’s first name in the greeting line. Personalization means including custom, specific information or content in emails based on the subscriber’s profile and preferences. Data personalization is all about creating dynamic content for emails that populates in real time. That content selection is driven by list data, showing a customer products, events or promotions relevant to them. Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14 percent and conversions by 10 percent.
AUTOMATION
Email automation involves creating workflows of automated messages to ensure the subscriber receives the right message at the right time. Workflows can be developed to react in real-time, or after a specified amount of time, to distribute emails to the right people based on data and behavior. Propelled by segmentation and personalization, email automation provides customers with a tailored experience. Automated email messages average 70.5 percent higher open rates and 152 percent higher click-through rates than “business as usual” marketing messages.
When you’re ready to dive in, don’t be fooled by pseudo-automation providers. There are a lot of them out there. Just because an email platform can kick an email back to a user after they fill out a form doesn’t mean your business is executing email automation. True marketing automation consists of tracking pixels and workflows which help build segmentation and personalization. Strategic implementation with the right tools will pack a bigger punch and can be indispensable to your overall marketing success.
