What is targeted email marketing and how can it help your business?
Bill Gates popularized the slogan "content is king" in a essay from 1996 to make clear the importance of content on the Internet. The first sentence read, "Content is where I expect much of the money will be made on the Internet, just like broadcasting."
He was right, of course. The content marketing market is booming. Companies spent in 2019, $42.15 billion spent on content. Projections show that the spending of 2021 to 2025 will increase by $417.85 billion.
However, we would argue that if content is king, personalization is queen, especially when it comes to e-commerce. A 2018 report states that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy something, when brands offer a personalized experience, and another study indicates that 70% of millennials don't like getting irrelevant emails.
Implement targeted email marketing.
What is targeted email marketing?
Targeted email is a message tailored to specific segments of an email list. A key element of targeted email marketing is creating content that is relevant and valuable to a particular segment.
The segmentation of recipients can be based on various factors, such as gender, geography, age, preferences, previous buying behavior, and so on.
The goal of targeted email advertising is to reach people on your list who are most likely to find your content relevant and exciting, thus increasing brand engagement. And each time you send an email, they are more likely to open it and visit your web shop.
Email marketing has long been considered one of the most effective strategies for increasing brand awareness and driving sales for e-commerce businesses. Research shows that the return on investment (ROI) $36 is for every $1 spent on email marketing.
For personalized content, you can expect even better engagement rates and sales conversions. One report claims that targeted emails do 42% better than generic emails in terms of open rates. Yet another report suggests that fewer but more targeted emails using customer data would be the most effective advertising spend.
Does targeted email work?
Anecdotally, it's easy to say that targeted emails work without delving into studies and reports. Think about it: you have probably opened emails that seemed to give you what you needed.
For example, you looked at an online store and viewed several items, but didn't buy anything. The next day, you found an email in your inbox that showed different variations of the item you had looked at and gave you a discount if you clicked on a specific link to buy the item. This is a simple conversion that the retail site can generate with a targeted email.
Of course, this doesn't always happen, but targeted emails can significantly increase your email opening rates (the number of recipients who open your email). More importantly, it can improve your click-to-open rates (CTOR) or your overall engagement.
Smart Insights reported that emails from the financial sector in 2020 had an open rate of 24.94%, but a CTOR of 12.92%. That means that only half of the people who opened the email read the content and interacted with the links and calls-to-action (CTA). In terms of content, CTOR is a more accurate indicator of an impact than open rate.
Let's talk about the many benefits of targeted email marketing:
Improves engagement
The purpose of an email is to engage the recipient, and a targeted email makes it likely that they will interact with the content. In addition to opening and reading your email, they may register for a newsletter, go to your website, make a purchase, forward the email to others, or reply directly to you.
Increases Revenue
Targeted email advertising has been shown to generate up to 36% of sales for B2B companies, and it goes without saying that it would work just as well with B2C online businesses. If you want to promote a product or increase overall sales, you should include targeted emails in your overall marketing strategy.
Strengthens brand recognition
Anyone who receives a targeted email from your brand will remember it because you offered value. Whether it's a discount for an appropriate item or service or access to gated content with useful information, recipients will be more likely to open your emails and follow your CTA.
Promotes Relationships
People like it when companies address them by name and remember what they have purchased. This level of personalization makes the customer feel valued and listened to.
When you send the customer the customized content that treats them as individuals, it creates a bond between you and the customer. And if you have a strong connection with your customers, they are more likely to develop trust and loyalty to your brand.
Increase retention
Customer loyalty is a direct result of developing relationships with your customers, and it is much more cost-effective to keep them coming back than to acquire new customers.
Unfortunately, most companies focus more on customer acquisition than customer retention. Existing customers of your web shop are 50% more likely to buy a new product from you than a new customer, so it makes sense to do everything you can to keep existing customers happy.
What are the most common types of targeted email campaigns?
Targeted email marketing comes in many flavors, and you can make a lot of variations on it depending on your data.
Here are five types that marketers often use:
Gender-focused email campaign
Personalizing emails based on gender effectively boosts sales for some industries, such as apparel and consumer products.
Many e-retailers could learn a few tricks from Coyuchi, which used colors to differentiate between emails to their male and female subscribers. They used gray and blue products for men and pastel colors for women. It was successful in that it led to more engagement and conversions.
Geo-targeted advertising via email
Segmenting by location is another easy way to personalize emails. Web shops are at an advantage because they have access to their customers' shipping addresses. You can also add IP geolocation to your site, so you can capture the location of your visitors even if they don't buy anything from you.
Geo-targeted email advertising is useful when you want to boost your local SEO performance. When more people visit your e-commerce store because they engaged with a targeted email, your site's ranking will improve in localized search results.
The beauty of e-commerce is that you can improve the local SEO ranking for all your locations using targeted email!
Email targeted by preferences
Targeting audience segments based on their interests and hobbies is an excellent way to bring them in. You can capture this information by including an email preference center on your website.
Once you have this information, you can focus on sending fewer value-added emails to your subscribers. If you do it right, they might start checking their inbox for your next messages.
Behavioral email campaign
Targeted email marketing based on behavior can be risky if you don't analyze your data properly. If you know how subscribers interact with your website and past emails, you can adjust content based on that behavior.
Several scenarios may come into play:
The subscriber spends a lot of time on one part of your site.
Determine the content that caught their attention and expand on it in your next email.
The recipient hasn't even opened your email.
Send a follow-up email with a compelling subject line, such as an exclusive look at a new product or asking them to change their email preferences.
A customer bought something.
Contact them with a thank you email with an expected delivery date. Include suggestions for additional purchases or attach a product tutorial for best practices.
Life-cycle targeted email advertising
Targeted e-mail advertising can help guide leads through the sales funnel by carefully guiding them through the process:
The site user becomes a member of the subscriber list (top of the funnel - awareness).
Send an email to welcome them to the club and offer links to the most useful articles on your site. Be sure to give them a link to the email preference center.
The subscriber views the site, but does not buy anything (top part of the funnel - interest).
Give them a code for a one-time discount or free shipping on their first purchase.
User adds a product to the shopping cart, but does not complete the purchase (lower middle of the funnel - desire).
Follow up with the potential sale by emailing them that they "forgot" to complete the checkout. You can offer a freebie or a discount to motivate them to close the deal.
Subscriber makes the first purchase (bottom of the funnel - purchase).
Welcome your new customer with a thank you bill and some cross-selling.
Once you've completed the sales funnel, you need to keep the cycle going. Keep sending targeted emails to turn first-time buyers into repeat buyers, and then loyal, long-term customers.
Pay special attention to loyal customers, because you want them to keep coming back. Send them emails exclusive to existing buyers and create a loyalty program to offer them special perks.
How do you create a targeted email campaign?
Now that you know the what and why of targeted email marketing, you should also know how to do it. Follow these steps to create highly effective targeted emails based on customer data.
Launch an enrollment campaign on your website and social media
Targeted email marketing focuses on creating personalized content that is relevant to your subscribers.
Make a concerted effort to collect email addresses for your list by using lead magnets such as newsletters, gated content, templates, videos, downloads, exclusive offers, free trials and discounts. Some tools to build lists can also help.
Divide your subscriber list into smaller segments
The people in your subscriber base probably have many things in common, especially in a niche market. But you can always find a way to break them into smaller groups so you can curate content that is particularly relevant to them.
you can base these segments on age, gender, location, occupation, hobbies, buying habits, and other demographics relevant to your business.
You can also ask your subscribers questions directly. For example, if you want to differentiate between those who like chocolate mint ice cream and those who don't, you can send them a survey form about it.
Create buyer personas
Next, create buyer personas for each segment of your target audience. Each persona should have a name and short description to help you set up your targeted email campaigns to persuade them to sign up. Use this template to get started.
Get started creating content
Use as much available data as possible for each market segment to create relevant content. There are many resources that can help you strike the right tone with your subscribers.
Canva for example, has many aesthetically pleasing email templates to grab the attention of your recipients. Bonus: it easily integrates with Mailchimp.
Test, test, test
Conduct split tests before sending your emails to the intended recipients. Do an A/B test for content, subject lines, timing and CTAs.
Establish clear key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure you meet the goals of each campaign.
How do you write a targeted email?
Creating the actual content for targeted email is the most challenging task for this marketing strategy.
It is best to create content from the point of view of your buyer persona. Think about what you would say to your customer if they were sitting in front of you. Answer these questions:
What are their pain points?
What kind of content would be most valuable to them?
What can you give them that will motivate them to take action?
Keep these points in mind as you think about this hypothetical scenario:
your client includes Sally, a 30-year-old stay-at-home mom with three small children. It's just after Christmas, and she's exhausted. The last thing she wants to do is think about the New Year's Eve party that's just around the corner.
She checks her email on her cell phone and sees an email from your beauty products company with the subject line, Are you exhausted? You deserve a little aromatherapy, on us!
Do you think she would open that email? Would you open it if you were Sally?
Want more inspiration? Here are some examples of targeted emails that received great acclaim from their recipients.
Summary
You can think of targeted email marketing as a return to the good old days, when writing letters was a labor of love. Each letter took a lot of thought and effort, and those who received them appreciated it. When you take the time to personalize your emails, you're telling your e-commerce customers that even though you've never physically met them, they are important and deserve that effort. The return will be worth it.
