Is Email Marketing Dead?

Personalization – Stop your emails from getting sent to the trash and drive more engagement for your email campaigns. Technical advances and constant regulation have forced marketers to be creative and evolve their marketing strategies to reach their end consumers. Yet somehow, even with the rising popularity of social media and other iGen channels, emails are here to stay. According to a study conducted by VentureBeat, email marketing has the highest ROI at generating $38 dollars for every $1 spent and is almost 40 times more effective at customer acquisition than social media outreach.

That said, those one-size-fits-all mass messages are no longer effective for consumer reach and monetization. In today’s day and age, we get bombarded with information on a daily basis. Radicati’s recent Email Statistics Report indicates that in 2016, consumers receive around 98.9 emails per day on average. This means that endless irrelevant messages simply just end up in Trash.

So how do you make your messages relevant enough to cut through the noise?

The answer is simple. Whether it is an email message, print publication or any other media – relevancy usually grabs the reader’s attention. If they can benefit from the message, it is more likely that they are going to open up the email, read the content, follow the links and make a transaction. So how do you send a relevant message to a wide audience with varied preferences?

Personalization is the key to engaging the subscriber and differentiating your brand. In the context of email, personalization involves leveraging the available data to create targeted campaigns relevant to specific readers. Here are some tried and tested tips to help you create a personalized email campaign.

Understand what makes your target readers tick!

For any marketing activity to be effective the marketers must first understand their audience, in our case, it is the email readers/subscribers. Besides demographic and geographic information, understanding the motivators of your audience is important. Understand why they visited your website, why they became a user and what motivated them to subscribe to your email newsletter.

Simple tools both paid and free based on Google Analytics platforms like SEMRush and MOZ can provide a wealth of information on the general demographics and the buying behaviour of your subscribers. You can add extra fields on email subscription forms or engage consumers in providing feedback through quick survey platforms. Survey Monkey is usually a great tool to work with when gathering feedback from your subscribers and users. A simpler way would be to work with market automation tools that link CRM and E-commerce platforms to integrate past purchases and browsing history.

What can you personalize?

Marketers can personalize some of the sections within an email to create relevant content that appeals directly to the subscribers.

• Use their name

The subject line is usually the first thing that catches the eye. Utilize this element by including the recipient’s name to draw the recipient’s attention to differentiate among a sea of emails. A study conducted by Experian shows that by simply personalizing the subject, the open rates increased by 26%.

• Time of delivery matters

Server logs on IP addresses make it easy to track a consumer’s geographical location. Create separate versions of an email to include geographical or culturally applicable information or images to target consumers in geographically dispersed locations. Use it in conjunction with presetting delivery to match different time zones for optimal response levels. Chances of a reader opening a personalized email during business hours are almost twice than that of a general email received at the strike of the business hour.

• Segment your Subscribers

Not all subscribers have the same motivators. Some are motivated by heavy discounts & off-season sales while others prefer exclusive offers and high-end options. By understanding the motivators and segmenting your subscribers accordingly, you can send separate emails for increased readability and engagement.

• Behaviour Triggered Emails

Consumers are more likely to open up purposeful emails that have to do with how they are interacting with the product. These emails are triggered in real-time, can be easily automated to reflect consumer history. For example, in situations such as first time user or re-engagement, a welcome email is both very personal and appropriate. Marketers can also up-sell or cross-sell based on purchase history and behaviour.

• Personalize Your Business

Personalization doesn’t have to only apply to the consumers’ end! Personalizing the brand makes the interaction more human, the messages seem sincere, and will likely achieve greater results. To do so, simply send the email and sign off with a sales representative or manager. Include first-person pronouns such as “we” and “I” and create the messaging to have more of a conversational and informal tone.

While email marketing still remains a cost-effective way to reach your target audience, adopting the recommendations mentioned can help you improve the effectiveness of campaigns. Personalized emails can help you draw the receiver’s attention and differentiate your message for better business results. In the new era of constant advances, savvy markets constantly find new and effective ways to capitalize on new marketing opportunities but it is also important to optimize existing resources as well.

Segment your Subscribers Not all subscribers have the same motivators. Some are motivated by heavy discounts & off-season sales while others prefer exclusive offers and high-end options. By understanding the motivators and segmenting your subscribers accordingly, you can send separate emails for increased readability and engagement.

About the Author

Emily Wang