Email marketing is an absolute powerhouse in terms of advertising your company. It’s a great way to drive clients back to your business and helps to increase the all-important conversions. The average ROI isn’t too shabby either, generating revenue of around 45 times the amount of money our clients put into it. Also, by using the data which email marketing strategies generate, we can keep that number high and customers engaged.
Using data to convert leads is definitely a more modern approach to business, but for many email marketers, getting to this point can be tricky. You’ve probably seen data used to some extent, like the addition of a first name in the subject line or emails relating to purchase history. Having data about customers and knowing that it can be used for marketing is one thing, however, implementing a plan that works for you is another. 81% of marketers find implementing data-driven email strategies to be very complicated.
Using the data you already have
You may feel that switching your current strategy to include more data-based decisions is a bridge too far and that you will look at it after your marketing cycle has ended. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Anyone who has a website, social media presence or in particular anyone who is using email marketing will already have data about their audience. Usually, this would include their name, email address and possibly even a postcode. After a quick glance at the data provided by your email marketing service, you may also be able to find out who is regularly reading your emails, whether they are clicking any links and viewing your products or services.
In fact, the majority of email marketing providers have a large amount of readily available data to make use of. You can drill-down the information provided and calculate where in the customer journey each user currently is. For instance, they might have recently joined your subscriber list, or maybe been a loyal customer for a long period of time or perhaps lost interest altogether.
This knowledge is a great starting point, however, it’s possibly the next step that most people tend to get hung up on – deciding what you are going to do and how you are going to use the collected data to drive your strategy.
It’s important here to remember your goals, what would you like your business to improve on? What areas of your business have the biggest opportunities for growth? Can email marketing help with this?
Creating segments within your lists will help you. These segments could include new leads or potential customers, users who have purchased or used your products or services in the past, or users who live in a specific geographic location. You can then use the data to personalise your communications to each new segment. With images, text and a variety of content geared towards those people specifically.
Many companies use gender data to send content specific to their email readers. Depending on what email marketing service you are using, this can be a very simple process and one that delivers very good results.
If there is some data you feel you could benefit from having, there are ways to collect it too.
Collecting new data
After you have made a simple assessment of what data you have and how you want to use your email marketing, you can start to collect new data. A great starting point is looking at your email marketing service and what tools they have available.
How you are able to achieve this will depend on what email marketing service you are using. For most services, it would simply be case of asking your users to provide the info you need, and explaining what you are going to use the data for.
A lot of companies ask what month their users were born so they can send out promotional emails and deals specific to them. Asking for an exact birthdate can often cause your users to reject the promotion. Sending out birthday greetings each month is still a great way to personalise an email and promote your business. Alternatively, you could ask for a users age and use this data to create list segments with product or services which are specific to certain age groups.
Using your data
Once you have gathered and segmented your data, it’s now time to utilise it within your email marketing strategy. We’ve already started to mention a few ways you can personalise your emails, but there are a few alternative ways you might want to consider. The most obvious being adding a name field on your signup forms and using it to then personally address the user. Most email marketing services will allow this and it’s pretty simple to do. But there are a couple of other ways too:
- Interests – Consider using a customer feedback form to find out what brought the user to your business in the first place and to discover more about their interests. Knowing about their specific interests or hobbies can ensure that more of the content you are sending out is related to them.
- Location – Knowing roughly whereabouts your customers live can be very useful. For example, you may be able to gear specific products to your customers in case of a heatwave or a local event.
Think carefully about how you can apply the data you have in different ways to customise your promotions. Use these ideas to build personalised emails with content specific to the user.
Wrapping up
Emails with user-specific content are much more likely to be opened and read. They also lead to an increase in conversions and sales for your business. Of course, this isn’t something that can be done overnight, so if your business needs help with your email marketing get in touch for a free consultation!