Monday, October 19, 2009

Creating Relevancy in Email Marketing

Email relevancy is KEY - especially when you consider you have the recipient’s attention for about three seconds.  So in that short period of time, it's crucial to cater your message to the recipient.fg.png

Sending relevant emails that are more in-tune with the recipient’s goals and interests will build a stronger connection between them and your company, plus create a much higher conversion ratio.

This post will provide you with valuable information on how to begin sending relevant emails that encourage action and actually get a response.


3 Factors That Constitute A Relevant Email



  1. Customized content to individual customers that matches their behavior and interests

  2. Timed-triggered responses that correspond to your customers location in the sales lifecycle

  3. Engaging messages that encourage interactivity


5 Sure-Fire Ways To Make Your E-mails More Relevant


1. Segmentation


By segmenting your customer list you have a much better chance of actually converting prospects into customers through your email campaigns.

Target your recipients based on different attributes, personas and behaviors. Once you have decided on these factors, construct your  email message to suit each.

  • Attributes - demographics and psychographics.

  • Behaviors - what are their purchasing habits, how engaged are they with your company, what types of media do they consume, why do they exist on social media platforms, etc.


2. Leverage Lifecycle Management


Imagine your customers or perspective customers are on a timeline. Where are they in respect to your business goals? Are they a new or returning customer? Or perhaps they are an inactive customer that hasn’t purchased from you in quite a while.

Figure out where they land on your company's sales lifecycle and tailor the email message to fit.

Some examples:

  • Sending welcome emails

  • Promoting loyalty campaigns

  • Activation emails

  • Retention messages and reactivation emails

  • Up-sell, cross sell etc.


3. Triggered E-mails


This ties-in with lifecycle management. Having  emails  triggered by certain events can be very powerful. But it's important to make them as personalized as possible with the available data you have.

These emails are driven by automated rules that you must create. These rules then set-up the emails with dynamic content based on the customers profile. They can be used for one time messages or they can trigger a campaign with a series of emails to be sent to the customer over a certain time frame.

4. Personalization


Personalization is a key component to relevancy. Just having the customers  name automatically inserted into the email doesn't cut it any more.

The email must be tailored to fit all available data you have for that person. This includes buying habits, sex, age, geographic location, and any additional information you may have captured from a preference center on your website.

Having a preference center is an extremely important piece of the personalization puzzle. With it you can determine which emails they would actually like to receive, how often they would like to receive them, and in what subjects or products are they most interested.

5. Interactivity


E-mails that facilitate customer engagement and response through links to purchase activity, social networking platforms, communication, entertainment, preference centers, and surveys are better-received than canned email blasts.

Emails from No-Reply@yourcompanyname.com are in bad taste.

Always Be Testing


Define your objectives for the email campaign and then choose which metrics are going to give you the clearest picture of what your campaign is promoting.

Test the impact of copy on subject lists, above the fold messaging, graphical layouts, usability, colors, etc. Find what works best for you.

If you are not testing and refining your campaigns, you might as well put your marketing budget into a trash can and set it on fire.

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