When it comes to email marketing, how well does your brand connect with its subscribers?
For businesses of any kind, having a refined email marketing strategy that speaks to their audience and sends the right messages is essential. It moves subscribers through the conversion funnel so they turn into loyal, paying customers. But, how do you transition them from a visitor to a customer?
Personalizing your email campaigns generates a 26 percent increase in open rates by tailoring your message to what your audience needs. It also cultivates a long-lasting relationship with your target market by giving them what they need. With all the readily available options out there, it makes sense why customers pick the experience they want to have with the brands they choose.
You need to personalize your email campaigns to improve lead generation, build strong customer relationships, and boost sales. Here are four tips to help you get started.
Research Your Audience
To personalize any campaign, you need to start at the source. The people you’re sending content to are the ones who will ultimately decide whether they’ll stay on your email list or unsubscribe. If your content doesn’t align with their needs, interests, or pain points, you risk losing subscribers and reducing conversions.
Research your target audience before planning your campaign. The more information you have, the easier it is to make the right marketing decisions and plan your campaign around your customers.
Pay attention to the blog posts that get the most attention and engagement. A steady 70 percent of consumers prefer getting to know a company through their blog content rather than advertisements. Noting which posts gain traction and which ones barely garner views gives you insight into what your audience wants from you.
To collect user data, send your subscribers a short, simple survey asking about themselves. What do they need help with? How can your brand solve their problems? What are they looking for from you?
Use the information you have to create fleshed-out buyer personas of your subscribers and current customers. Their age, location, pain points are all details you need to understand who they are and how your business can tend to their needs.
Only through knowing your subscribers by collecting information will you be able to create personalized, relevant email campaigns.
Implement Consistent Branding
Users receive tons of emails in their inboxes daily. Emails from businesses, brands, loved ones, coworkers, and bosses added together can be overwhelming to sift through. However, if people know an email is from you, they’re likelier to open it and engage.
A great way to distinguish your campaign from all the others is by implementing your branding into every email. If it lacks the elements that make up your brand, then subscribers won’t know who it’s from and there’s a chance it could end up in their spam folder.
To ensure you’re applying consistent branding to your emails, make sure to:
- Use a specific color scheme.
- Pick a font and stick to it.
- Add your logo to every email.
- Use imagery.
Colors are an excellent way for the brain to distinguish you from competitors and remember your brand accurately. Using the same colors for every campaign helps establish brand recognition.
If there are one or two fonts you want to use, make sure you stick to them for each campaign.
Making your subscribers familiar with your logo and other visual aspects of your brand reinforces its recognition.
To catch and keep readers’ attention, you may need more than blocks of text. Use visuals to break up paragraphs and give them something interesting to look at.
Your tone, voice, language, imagery, and logo are all elements that separate your campaign from the rest. Consistency in every email is important if you’re going to build your email list with loyal subscribers who look forward to your content every week or month. Having parts of your branding in one email and then abandoning it in the next email is a quick way to lose subscribers.
Segment Your List
Your customers make up a wide array of people with different needs and interests. If every one of them were the same, you wouldn’t need personalization in the first place. The way to get subscribers’ attention is by catering to their specific needs and showing them you’re an attentive brand.
You can give each subscriber what they want by segmenting your list into different groups or categories. Depending on your goals, you can separate them however you’d like. Revisit what you’d like to accomplish before splitting up your subscribers so you know you’re closer to reaching your objectives.
Common ways to segment an email list include:
- New subscribers
- Industry
- Past purchases
- Age
- Gender
- Inactivity
- Lead magnet
Send Personalized Suggestions
Have you ever browsed products on a website and later received an email from the brand reminding you of those products? Though this type of email may come as a surprise to users, it’s a pleasant one that reintroduces them to the items they like. Seeing the items they were interested in will likely encourage them to revisit your website and make a purchase.
You can also show customers similar items to the ones they were browsing so they have more to look at and engage with. The more relevant suggestions you provide them, the likelier they are to navigate to your website. Your website data gives you all the information you need to track where visitors spend most of their time.
You can personalize your suggestions based on:
- Location
- Past purchases
- Browsing history
- Demographics
- Responses to past campaigns
There are endless ways to send subscribers offers they can’t refuse. The more you know them, as well as the more data you have on them, the easier it is to target their interests so your content always aligns with their needs.
Your Turn
To bring in higher conversions with the next email campaign, you may need to add personalization to the mix. Your subscribers want to feel important to your brand. It’s your job to treat them well so they keep returning and turn into loyal customers. These tips are sure to help you build a campaign that speaks to your subscribers and brings in revenue.
