So you’re ready to finally tackle the world of email marketing as part of your overall digital marketing strategy. No matter which platform you’re using of the many email marketing services available on the market, you might be feeling stuck at square one. If that sounds like you, don’t worry. We’ve come up with 3 tips to achieve the best email marketing strategy for your business this year.
Best Email Marketing Strategy Tip #1: Segmentation
If you’ve been in the digital marketing industry for even just a short while, you know the importance of audience segmentation and the benefits it can yield. When you segment your audience, it allows you to optimize your product and marketing to the different needs of your diverse user base. So of course it makes sense to think about segmentation when it comes to email marketing.
What exactly is email segmentation? According to Campaign Monitor, it is “the division of email subscribers into smaller segments based on set criteria.” This criteria could result in anything from demographic segmentation (based on occupation, age, gender, etc.), to segmentation based on where your audience is in their buyer journey.
How can segmentation help you? As you can see, there are many ways to segment your audience, and each way can be valuable to you. If you’ve taken the time to develop buyer personas for your audience, then you know that a certain buyer persona will be drawn to an email blast containing exclusive updates while another will be most likely to open an offer for a discount.
Best Email Marketing Strategy Tip #2: Personalization
Another tip when it comes to creating a strong email marketing strategy is to take advantage of personalization. Sometimes this can be confused or conflated with segmentation, but it’s actually a unique aspect of email marketing that when used in conjunction with segmentation, can make your campaign much stronger.
While segmentation is about identifying different groups of customers, personalization is about focusing on the customers that make up a group. Examples of personalization tactics include:
- Personal Communication – Are your emails coming from your company name, or an individual person? If it’s the former, consider changing the “From:” section to the name of your lead email marketer. Receiving an email from an individual instead of an entity is more enticing to recipients. Once they open, try and address the email to each recipient individually by using a name fill-in form the merge fields of your email marketing software. This will build a sense of trust and rapport between you and your recipient.
- Trigger Events – You can use any number of actions to trigger an email to your customers. The list includes email list sign-ups, abandoning an eCommerce cart, viewing certain items, or spending a lot of time on a landing page. The email will be about the specific action they’ve taken, making it seem as though you reached out to them personally based on their behavior.
- Mobile Optimization – You know at SEM Nexus we love mobile apps, which is why we take this piece of advice to heart. Pages can look very different on desktop versus mobile devices, and not accounting for this can result in disaster if a beautifully designed email is cut off or strangely formatted when someone opens it up on the go. If you design your emails on a desktop, be sure that the template is responsive so that it will automatically change the format for mobile as much as possible when opened. Don’t rely too heavily on images, as these are often turned off in mobile mode. And be efficient with your wording, as people relying on mobile email are normally very busy.
Personalizing your emails in as many ways as possible will help you build relationships with your customers as they come to rely on you more and more to address their individual needs along their journey.
Best Email Marketing Strategy Tip #3: Data-Driven Analysis
Our final tip for an effective email marketing strategy is to pay attention to the metrics that matter most to your company as you move forward. When it comes to your list of email marketing goals, it is up to you to add each KPI in accordance with your company’s overall vision. For example, are you looking to drive more eCommerce sales? Maybe you’re interested in increasing mobile app downloads, or encouraging your audience to take advantage of a particular underutilized feature. Once you’ve created your list of KPIs, it’s important to track them regularly. Whether you do this with a click map in your MailChimp dashboard, or you integrate other analytics tools, you’ll want to review the information regularly. Compiling a report that you present to the team monthly or quarterly can help you come together to see what is working, and how you can continue to improve.
Before You Go
Email marketing doesn’t have to be an intimidating mystery. If you want to have the best email marketing strategy possible, remember to put your customers at the center of your strategy. If you do this, then you will be able to base everything else around them, making your focus more concrete. Jump in headfirst to this approach, and watch your email marketing take to the next level!