 | According to a recent Jupiter Research study, targeted email marketing campaigns can generate nine times more revenue than broadcast mailings. If you're sending broadcast emails - the same email to everyone - it's time to look at improving your communications to get the full ROI benefit of this communication channel. There are methods available for marketers to craft and send targeted and relevant emails to each subscriber: .
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Personalisation. Personalising elements of an email to make it appear to have been created only for a single recipient.Segmentation. If a marketer doesn’t have enough detail to personalise, segmenting is a good option. By slicing the mailing list into subgroups determined by attributes, such as open history, business sector, demographic, etc the marketer can target to a group, rather than to the individual.
Triggered campaigns. This type of email is sent based on a variety of events, such as a fulfillment of a request, reminder, transaction or notification. They’re often used in conjunction with regular email communications.
Dynamic Content. This is the most sophisticated method available. Through a complex mail-merge technique, unique email content is delivered to each recipient on the mailing list and reflects an individual reader’s interests, previous clicks and purchases.
The bottom line for success in email marketing is: the more data a marketer has, the better the ability to create a targeted email. Segmenting and personalising are probably the easiest method for marketers who don’t have much of a data profile on their mailing list. Segmentation can be as simple as splitting out customers from prospects, or by geographic or demographic fields. By far, the most popular use of personalisation is addressing the subscriber by name, but other broad uses of personalisation can include the from field and subject line. Dynamic content targeting absolutely depends on a high level of subscriber data in order to create a successful campaign.
What fields in an email can be targeted?
There are many elements of an email that can be configured to reflect the relationship and sales history you have on a subscriber. These include:
From/subject line – Not only do these two fields play a vital role in getting opened, they also immediately identify you and the relationship you have with the recipient. The from field might be from the company, brand, or a person within the company. The subject line can let the recipient know what’s inside the email.
Content – Content must be of value and of use to the recipient – otherwise you will lose their interest. Therefore, sending the right content to the right subscriber is important. The type of content that can be segmented or personalised include; relevant products or services information, articles, white papers, links and also events by region.
Call to action. The call to action in emails is critical to sales and conversions – and can be quite powerful if they are personalised to the subscriber. For example a local phone number, or a specific deep link within the company website, or offers based on past behaviour, etc.
Data is the key to success
According to MarketingSherpa, any technique that makes the email appear more targeted, relevant and timely can increase clicks by 70%, so it really is worth the time and effort to send targeted emails. The technology available today makes it easy to target; but the only way a marketer can move beyond batch and blast is by having quality data, and the ability to build on that data.
If you’re just getting started, review what data you do have within your company, such as sales history and geographical location - anything that gives you a jump-start on your profiling. The key is to embark on your email marketing relationships with the plan to improve the quality of what you are sending each time you send.
Use an append service. A reputable best practice email appending service provider can append many types of data fields to a company’s existing data records.
Devise a powerful opt-in form. In a study by ChoiceStream, 80% of consumers said they want highly-personalised emails that are relevant to them, and 64% said they are willing to share preference data in order to help marketers identify their needs. Your opt-in form will give your subscribers this ability to provide the information, and is also very valuable in starting the targeting process with subscribers from the very first send. (see SIDEBAR: Top Tips for Optimising Your Opt-in Form)
Ask for more information. Running surveys and competitions, with incentives, can help you gain insight into your subscribers.
Use the metrics from your mailings. One of the most valuable elements of email is its measurability. With analytics you can measure activities and behaviour of individual subscribers per mailing and also over a period of time. Gathering metrics, such as clicks, response rates, revenue, lifetime value, sales cost-per promotion, incremental lift and ROI will help you build an accurate subscriber behavioral profile.
Top Tips for Optimising Your Opt-in Form
Your opt-in form is one of the top tools in capturing data that will help you devise emails for subscribers that are based on their interests. Here are some tips:
Choose your fields carefully. Studies show that the more required fields included in a form, the higher the abandonment rate during the subscription process. Particularly if the required fields don’t appear to relate to fulfilling their simple request to receive your newsletter. Unless you have very specific reasons why you need each piece of information from a subscriber, and are ready to accept a lower subscribe rate, then a good rule of thumb is to keep your form to no more than 5 to 7 fields (not all of them required) for the visitor to fill out.
Have a good description. Tell people very specifically what they’re signing up to. Go for the WIFM factor – which means “What’s In It For Me?” Don’t be vague or hedge your bets in the hopes that everyone will sign up. Descriptions such as “Sign up to get company news” or “Hear about our products” won’t inspire anyone. What you want to do is encourage people to sign up who are going to be very interested in your products and services; they’re the ones most likely to be active and engaged with your emails.
Have a privacy policy. Have a link to your privacy policy regarding your email marketing activities. It’s in EU legislation, but even more importantly is best practice. Telling people clearly what you’ll do with your data is part of the trust building process with subscribers.
Offer samples of past issues. Have an archive of past issues available so potential subscribers can see what they’re signing up to.
Give a format preference. In an email experience council report on rendering, they found that up to 20% of people read emails in plain text. For a variety of reasons, subscribers may prefer to get text - always offer a HTML or text version of your emails.
Easy to sign up / unsubscribe. Sign up should be easy. But sign off should be a breeze - and take only seconds to do. Don’t make them remember what email address they signed up with, don’t make it double opt-out, don’t put the unsubscribe behind a complicated password protected area and don’t ignore their requests and keep on sending emails to them (very damaging to your reputation), and do implement the suppress immediately.
Test the form. Test the subscribe form to make sure it works! Also plan to test all aspects of your form, such as number of fields, how much or how little you ask for, what you require, etc., to find out what is getting the best results. You’ll be aiming to acquire not the highest number of subscribers, but the most relevant and most interested number of subscribers.
Denise Cox
Newsletter Specialist
www.newsweaver.co.uk
