Email Marketing – Take Pride in Your Data
Personal, considerate, attentive. No – this is not your latest crush; this is the latest email in your inbox. Did you know customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that are not focused on their customers?*
Now has never been a better time to align your business with the needs of your customers. Blanket mailshots to all, unattended chat bots, overseas call centres and out of stock promotions can be some of our many niggles. But how can we eliminate these niggles from our customers?
Let’s start together by making marketing emails meaningful and get your customers all the way to the checkout and beyond.
Here we look at the best ways to strike a chord via email:
- Buying an email database is a bad idea and huge waste of money, a shortcut that won’t work. You can’t trust the quality of contacts; these could be old and irrelevant to your audience segment and the contact will have no idea who you are, which could result in you being penalised by your email client. Also consider how many other people have been sold this database. You’ll get poor response rates and ultimately hinder your reputation. Instead, collect email addresses at the get go, offer email collection pop ups, subscription opt-ins at checkout or outright ask your contacts if they are happy to hear from you and on what level. A healthy segmented contact list is gold dust.
- Nurture your audience based on their profile or browsing activity. Make it about them, make it exclusive, show personality or share tips and tricks towards navigating your user journey. Set page triggers on your website to trigger emails with timed relevant product recommendations, back in stock reminders and abandoned cart notifications. Ultimately you are looking to create a workflow of engagement triggers that can accommodate the customer’s lifetime cycle and not just value.
- Get the message right. The inbox can be hostile, so it’s important you make the subject line stand out especially when a third of your contacts decide whether to read your email based on the subject line. Address birthdays and anniversaries, recent interactions with your site like clicks and particular page visits or address information collected at signup stage. Use power words that inspire and excite. Provide a solution to a problem – speak directly with your audience. Emojis can also increase open rates but be sure they have synergy with the copy.
Now you have all your ducks in a row, it’s time to share your customer information with other departments. This will aid in getting a sense of who your audience is, helping you find new ways to talk to people and enable you to create advertising content outside this channel. Just be sure you are in position to measure your activity. Take pride in your data.
