Maximize Your Email Marketing Campaign
While your Social Media communications should continue to play a vital role in your online marketing strategy, email is still a preferred method of receiving brand information for many customers. Take these points into consideration when optimizing your email marketing campaign:
1. Segmentation
Many businesses collect names and emails from customers and nothing more. That's like collecting baseball cards with no statistics. I see this all the time with online coupon companies. Promotional reps walk around cities with a clipboard or tablet taking down names and emails but don't request demographic data such as sex, age, and product preferences. It's important to create a basic demographic make-up for your database, otherwise the names and emails are nothing more than names and emails - not customers.
2. Targeting
Continuing with our example of online coupon companies, without segmentation, the public is flooded with emails of special offers and discounts for items that are not relevant to them. Why would you want to receive offers for a dog spa when don't even have a pet? People get agitated after the one-hundredth non-relevant email offer and click "unsubscribe". The coupon company then loses a potential customer. However, if the company added demographic data into the mix, and targeted emails to specific segments, the positive response would be tremendous. If you are fan of the Arts & Culture scene in your city and you received email offers about gallery events and tickets to the theater, you would be much more receptive to emails from the coupon company in the future. Email campaigns should be targeted towards customer characteristics.
3. Broad Based Targeting
While targeted email campaigns are essential and should take priority in your email campaign, large scale email "blasts" have a place too. Emails to your entire database can be an effective method of delivering important announcements about the product/service or company that could be considered relevant to your entire customer base. Looking once again at our coupon company example, a broad based email could inform prospective customers about the addition of a new Social Media account to complement the coupon company's website, where some special offers will be given only to those that "like" or "follow" that specific Social Media account.
4. Automation
Sophisticated email marketing campaigns will integrate automation into their strategy. Email communications can be triggered when a certain action is taken by an individual or group within the email content management system. In the coupon company example, within their most recent email, a customer "clicks" to request to receive email offers only once per week, the system can automatically send the user a brief checklist about which product/service categories they prefer to receive offers from, so that the coupon company can batch the most relevant offers towards the consumer, to be sent out only once per week.
5. Mobile Optimization
The public is often receptive to email offers while on their mobile device. They check their mobile emails to occupy time while on public transit, in line at a café, and even in the elevator. It's like reading the back of the cereal box while seated at the breakfast table - anything to pass the time. In addition, 33% of smartphone users have or are willing to make purchases from their mobile device. Make sure your emails are optimized to display and function properly on all mobile devices.
Conclusion
Some of the above points are easy to follow for businesses attempting to maximize ROI from their email marketing campaign while others may require expertise to properly initiate. For help on optimizing an Email Marketing Campaign for your business, consult an authority on internet marketing.
1. Segmentation
Many businesses collect names and emails from customers and nothing more. That's like collecting baseball cards with no statistics. I see this all the time with online coupon companies. Promotional reps walk around cities with a clipboard or tablet taking down names and emails but don't request demographic data such as sex, age, and product preferences. It's important to create a basic demographic make-up for your database, otherwise the names and emails are nothing more than names and emails - not customers.
2. Targeting
Continuing with our example of online coupon companies, without segmentation, the public is flooded with emails of special offers and discounts for items that are not relevant to them. Why would you want to receive offers for a dog spa when don't even have a pet? People get agitated after the one-hundredth non-relevant email offer and click "unsubscribe". The coupon company then loses a potential customer. However, if the company added demographic data into the mix, and targeted emails to specific segments, the positive response would be tremendous. If you are fan of the Arts & Culture scene in your city and you received email offers about gallery events and tickets to the theater, you would be much more receptive to emails from the coupon company in the future. Email campaigns should be targeted towards customer characteristics.
3. Broad Based Targeting
While targeted email campaigns are essential and should take priority in your email campaign, large scale email "blasts" have a place too. Emails to your entire database can be an effective method of delivering important announcements about the product/service or company that could be considered relevant to your entire customer base. Looking once again at our coupon company example, a broad based email could inform prospective customers about the addition of a new Social Media account to complement the coupon company's website, where some special offers will be given only to those that "like" or "follow" that specific Social Media account.
4. Automation
Sophisticated email marketing campaigns will integrate automation into their strategy. Email communications can be triggered when a certain action is taken by an individual or group within the email content management system. In the coupon company example, within their most recent email, a customer "clicks" to request to receive email offers only once per week, the system can automatically send the user a brief checklist about which product/service categories they prefer to receive offers from, so that the coupon company can batch the most relevant offers towards the consumer, to be sent out only once per week.
5. Mobile Optimization
The public is often receptive to email offers while on their mobile device. They check their mobile emails to occupy time while on public transit, in line at a café, and even in the elevator. It's like reading the back of the cereal box while seated at the breakfast table - anything to pass the time. In addition, 33% of smartphone users have or are willing to make purchases from their mobile device. Make sure your emails are optimized to display and function properly on all mobile devices.
Conclusion
Some of the above points are easy to follow for businesses attempting to maximize ROI from their email marketing campaign while others may require expertise to properly initiate. For help on optimizing an Email Marketing Campaign for your business, consult an authority on internet marketing.
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