When I analyze successful marketing campaigns, relevance is major reason for success or failure.
The Golden Rule in Life as in Marketing is, "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you."
Delivering your brand promise to the right person, with the right
message, at the right time is critical in ensuring overall marketing
success.
According to JupiterResearch, relevance and timing are as effective at driving conversions as discounting.
Most people complain about email marketing because they get too many emails that are simply irrelevant to satisfying their needs - common sense indeed.
Here are a few things to consider before you deploy your next email campaign.
- Establish targeted messaging using dynamic content and segmentation
- When you're collecting data, ask for a little at a time so your customers can build trust with you
Here's how you can start to build some trust:
- First ask for permission to send emails to your customers
- When requesting the customer’s opt-in, give them specifics of the email campaign they are subscribing to such as content, frequency and services
Providing complete transparency to a customer leverages your credibility and builds trust.
Once you've established their opt-in preference, begin trending a customer’s specific interests. By collecting your customers purchase history, demographics, email or web site behavior, you can create a more relevant experience.
According to MarketingSherpa’s 2006 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide, marketers are personalizing their emails through the following:
- Abandoned Shopping Carts
- Behavioral
- Demographic Data
- Dynamic and Segmented Content
- Lead Source
- Product Profiling
- User Details
So start with the basics, such as name, email and opt-in and start to build a database of content that enables you to create a message that your customer wants to receive and respond to.
Segmenting your audience will enable you to deliver a highly relevant message more effectively. This is an easy way that enables marketers to learn more about each specific group or audience they interact with, allowing them to better tailor their content and send more targeted messages.
According to MarketingSherpa, a non-segmented promotional campaign receives a .48% click through rate, versus a 6.68% click through rate on a segmented promotional campaign.
Most email marketing service providers lend you the flexibility to seamlessly segment your audience within the application, allowing for more time to work on messaging than creating segments.
A few easy and simple ideas for campaign segmentation can include action-based, gender, birthday.
Good luck!