Email marketing has seen its fair share of success of the last couple of years. It has been one of the tools of choice for internet marketers to reach and talk to their customers and prospects. However, for some internet marketers, email campaigns have been losing their effectiveness. This article will present and discuss solutions and approaches that will help improve the effectiveness of your campaigns and at the same time make your campaigns more relevant.
Approaches to email marketing
There are three approaches to email marketing
One size fits all approach. This is least effective of the three approaches. Create one email and send it to your whole list. Cross your fingers and hope for the best.
- Segmented email campaigns
This approach entails breaking up your lists into smaller groups and then using demographical information to better target them. This approach is driven by marketers and uses segments defined by you. For example, you could have an age segment and then target your segments accordingly. 18-24 get one email, 25-35 another, etc.
- Behaviour based email campaigns
Behavioural email campaigns entail treating each customer or contact individually. It is a personal marketing approach. Each contact gets an email with the content and the timing of the email tailored for them.
Why behavioural emails campaigns are winners.
Without a doubt behavioural emails campaigns are the campaigns that bring in the best results. All emails take into account demographic information but also take into account online behaviours of the contact receiving them. Behavioural information is gathered using your website, contests, social media, emails, etc. All this information is aggregated under a contact and can then be reused for marketing.
Say you are a marketer for a major drug store chain and you decide to put in place new e-flyer campaign for in store promotions. You would have three different options:
- You could send out one mass email blast to all contacts with the same promotions for everyone. You would reach your customers but everyone would get the same promotions. This would be ok but your results would suffer.
- Create demographic segments and then tailor your promotions accordingly. A young male would get promotions for men’s cologne. An older female would receive other promotions.
- You could use behavioural information to create highly personalized and targeted emails. Using behavioural information you could differentiate between a young male that likes sports vs. one that has a family. You could send promotions on diapers to the one that has a family vs. one that does not.
With behavioural email campaigns the customer is in control of the message, not marketers. Let your customers tell you what they like and what they need and then give it to them. Results will speak for themselves.
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