By Natalie Burg
There’s a lot to consider when crafting an email marketing campaign for your small business: How much content is too much content? How often is too often to send customers emails? What kind of headline will get recipients to actually open it?
And, there’s one question that often gets overlooked: “Who should receive this email?”
Perhaps that’s because the answer seems obvious. Everyone on your email list should receive your campaigns, right?
Maybe not. More and more businesses are finding that the more targeted the email, the more successful the results. That means taking the time to sort through your list and add customer data to each profile, so you have some criteria on which to set your targets. It may be time consuming, but here are three of the reasons why it’s worth it:
Because They’ll Get Opened
Open rates are generally pretty depressing. Even industries with the best average open rates hover solidly below 50 percent. But with targeted emails, the numbers tend to creep up.
According to Inc.com, a recent Bloomberg report found that many larger companies are now sending smaller batches of emails targeted toward shopping habits and interests.
“And if the big guys doing it doesn’t convince you, take this,” the article says. “Bloomberg cited a report from Experian Hitwise, an Internet traffic tracker, which found that customers are 29% more willing to open a tailored promotional email than a general one.”
Because it Means More Control
If you have e-mail list of thousands, you might think twice about blasting a big coupon out to the whole lot of them. That was an issue a bead and jewelry-making supply retailer came across.
“When you have to pay those bills, you run a big batch-and-blast promotion with a site-wide coupon that can bring a lot of money in the door,” Devin Kimura, CEO at Artbeads.com tells Marketing Sherpa. “Then you have to replenish that inventory you just sold, so you have to run another discount campaign. Then your customers start to get hooked on the discounts coming… It’s a very damaging cycle.”
By segmenting his list into segments, Kimura was able to target his big spenders, personalize the subject line based on their spending activity and offer just those customers exclusive discounts.
The result? Artbeads.com was able to reach conversion rates up to 208% higher than their typical email campaigns, as well as increases in open and click-through rates.
Because Amazon is Doing It
And isn’t a Amazon usually doing online marketing the right way?
“Amazon effectively and consistently harnesses its customer data to drive its email program,” says Mashable. This data, which Amazon collects from customer searches and purchases, allows them filter their enormous customer database and send customers only information that truly pertains to them.
“For the customer, this email would likely be a list of recommended products that are based on a recent purchase,” Mashable reports.
Whether your email list is 100 addresses long or 1,000, odds are it contains customers with a variety of interests, habits and spending patterns. Rather than annoy half of your audience with emails that aren’t relevant to them, inspire them to open each targeted message to make your email marketing efforts go farther.
What data could you add to your customer list, and what kind of targeted emails could you send based on that data?
How do you craft the perfect email? Follow the tips in Infusionsoft’s “Anatomy of an Email” to get the best message out to your target audience.
This post Ready, Aim, Email: Get Results with Targeted Email Marketing was first published on the Big Ideas Blog.