If You’re Not Doing Targeted Email Marketing, You Need to Start
In today’s digital world, business owners can reach potential customers in many ways. Email marketing is still one of the best methods.
As social media advertising capability has grown, email marketing is sometimes considered an outdated method of reaching customers. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Creating highly targeted emails is an essential part of many successful business marketing strategies.
Why do owners and marketers love targeted email marketing so much? Targeted emails are highly effective for getting your product or service in front of customers who are ready to buy. And unlike most other targeted marketing methods, email can be done for FREE!
Target email marketing provides many benefits for the business, including:
1) Increased customer engagement.
2) Positive customer experience with the brand
2) Saving time and money by getting the right message in front of the right person
3) Increased email open rates and call to action results
4) Increased SALES!
What Is Target Email Marketing
Target email marketing is crafting highly relevant and targeted messages to a particular segment of your email list. Unlike typical emails, where a message is blasted across an entire email list, target focuses on sending tailored messages to specific members of your list.
Personalization has become everything today. Consumers are increasingly wanting marketing messages tailored specifically to them. Business owners and marketers must adapt to this trend.
Cookie-cutter approaches to marketing are slowly dying and the sooner you can adapt to these shifts the better positioned you will be.
Segmenting your customer email list is a great starting point in personalizing your marketing efforts. Segmentation is putting your audience into different segments based on shared characteristics.
How you segment it is completely dependent upon what metrics you decide to track. Some standard segments include purchasing habits, purchase frequency, brand engagement level, or average order value. The more specific the metric the more effective the message can be.
When business owners understand various metrics of their consumer, they can better tailor emails to the inboxes of those likely to benefit the most.
Lets Grow That Email List
You must first have an email list to create highly personalized email marketing messages. Growing your email lists is a result of your sales and marketing efforts. There are many ways owners can collect email addresses. Here are a few:
1) Pop-Up Pages – Digital pages placed on a website that pop up as a visitor interact within it. The pop-up page typically includes some value (coupon, e-book, etc.) in exchange for an email address.
2) Social Media – Companies may host online events or contests through their social media platforms. They, in turn, ask for email addresses to gain entry.
3) Sales – Whether a brick-and-mortar or online store, part of closing the sale should be getting a customer’s email address. It’s a great first step to building a long-term relationship with the customer.
4) Surveys – Asking for feedback can be an excellent way to improve your processes and get email addresses. Attaching a coupon or gift can help entice more customers to fill out these forms.
5) Referral – Asking existing customers to refer friends can allow you to gather more emails.
Since customers have shown enough interest in you to provide you with their email, they have opened the door for you to interact and nurture a relationship with them – an essential part of creating brand loyalty and repeat customers.
Nice Email List! This Is What You Can Do With It
Now that you have built up your email list, here are some fantastic ways to utilize it.
1) Product Promotion – One of the first ways to generate some buzz about a new product launch is through target email marketing. If it’s a product similar to what an existing customer has purchased, then it’s likely to garner interest from that customer again.
2) Feedback – Asking for feedback on someone’s shopping experience or how their product is doing can provide you with valuable insights.
3) Idea Generation – Want to develop a new product or design? Do you need a new idea for a piece of content you want to write? Why not ask those on your email list? It can also be a great way to build community with your customers.
5) Reengage Inactive Customers – An email list lets you reach out to customers who have not interacted with your brand in a while. Add a coupon or promo code to the email to reignite their interest again.
6) Distribute Newsletters – Providing valuable insights or information can help you become an industry expert. Being perceived as an industry expert gives you authority in whichever space you operate within. Customers are likelier to listen and do business with you if you are a trusted source.
How to Create Highly Effective Targeted Emails
Target email marketing is a skill that is developed through practice. No matter the media, channel or market some basic principals apply across it all.
Know your audience, create compelling content and have a clear call to action. Keep this in mind as you approach any aspect of your marketing plan. Follow these steps to create highly effective emails.
Identify What the Objective of Your Email Marketing Is
Focus on one clear goal for the email. By doing this, the entire creation process of the email will be better structured, organized, and targeted.
The last thing you want to do is promote your product, talk about your monthly newsletter, and bring up a fantastic event you are hosting, all in the same email. Conflicting messages create confusion for the reader.
Select Your Segment
Select which customers on your email list would best benefit from the message you have. Promote products to segments that have expressed interest in similar products. Craft a special birthday discount for people with a birthday that month.
Segment selection makes the message more personalized and effective.
Crafting the Message
Remember these points when crafting your emails message:
- Try to use the contact name if available. Emails with the recipient’s names are more likely to be noticed. When crafting your message, make it as personable as possible. For example, you can reference a past purchase they have made and recommend accessories that would make it better.
- Ensure you’re using clear and easy-to-understand language. Using jargon or terms your recipient may not be familiar with will create confusion. Using bullet points or short paragraphs makes the message more scannable. This allows the reader to quickly get a general idea of the emails purpose.
- Ensure the typography you use complements the message, not distracts from it. Use color, images, and typography that align with your brand and add to the overall taste of the message.
- Use only images that are relevant and enhance the objective of the email. Imagery appearing flashy or of poor quality makes the email look spammy and likely to be ignored.
- Make sure you are optimizing emails for mobile devices. A good portion of emails opened today are done so on mobile.
Compelling Subject Line
The subject line may be your only opportunity to catch a reader’s attention. Make it clear, concise, and personalized. You want the reader to see the value of opening the email without telling them everything.
Testing different subject lines can help you understand what best resonates with your recipients.
Call to Action
Craft a clear call to action. A CTA is what you want the recipient of the email to do next. It could be reading a blog post, visiting your site, or signing up for something. Ensure the CTA is easy to find and that you’ve utilized action-oriented wording that makes the reader want to take that next step.
Test, Test, and More Testing
Target email marketing is something you must test and refine. Test images, subject lines, and copy to see what works best. Sometimes, all it takes is different wording or imagery to make them exponentially more effective.
Learning what works best with your audience is vital to becoming a better email marketer.
Conclusion
Targeted email marketing is an essential and powerful strategy for communicating with your audience. It allows you to increase your business’s sales, foster community, and increase brand awareness.
Ensuring your emails are personable will lead to higher open rates and engagement.
Businesses are more focused than ever on making their marketing efforts more personal. Email marketing will continue to be one of the best ways they will do so.
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