It’s no secret that businesses benefit from strategic email campaigns—whether that’s by improving customer retention, gaining new clientele, or boosting revenue. The key to success is to optimize the customer data you’ve collected over time through emails, phone calls, and in-store visits. Here are a few ways you can channel that data into an effective marketing strategy.
Segment Your Audience
Before you write any promotional copy, you need to define the purpose of your campaign. Are you looking to build brand awareness, sell more products, establish thought leadership? By defining your objectives ahead of time, you can segment your targeted audience and send unique, relevant messages to interested readers.
With Connectivity’s Customer Insights, you can create a customer list using email or phone records or by uploading an existing customer list you have (perhaps collected in-store). This records pertinent information including a customer’s phone number, email address, geographic distance from your business, marital status, household income, and more, allowing you to segment the list into specific demographic or psychographic information.
Create Targeted Messaging
Image credit: Tarchyshnik Andrei / ShutterstockIf your goal is to increase in-store sales, you can focus on local marketing by segmenting your customer list into individuals who live within a short distance from your business. Then you can send an email campaign to that segment with a special in-store offer that will entice them to visit your store.
If you want to reach customers who live further away, you can send them a separate campaign that offers them a unique deal, perhaps a 10% discount online. That way, those customers are still encouraged to purchase your product, even if their geographic location prevents them from coming to your brick-and-mortar store directly.
It’s crucial for your business that you have a clear picture of your target audience. Simply collecting customer data is not enough if you don’t analyze and draw actionable insight from it. For example, if you’re an insurance provider, you need to know if your customers own their homes, or if they rent; if they have children, they may be interested in an extensive plan that covers family members as opposed to a single customer who may want a simpler plan. By distinguishing your audience, you can send focused campaigns that address their different needs.
Reduce Inactivity
Just because a customer subscribes to your email newsletter doesn’t mean they’re paying attention to your brand. Customer Insights can help you determine who your most active customers are and focus your marketing efforts on that audience.
For each customer profile, you can see how often they’ve called and/or emailed your business, and the last time they contacted you. For your most active clientele, you can send them a campaign that rewards them for their loyalty. On the other hand, you may want to email a customer who hasn’t contacted you in awhile to let them know you miss their business and would like to offer them a special deal for their next purchase.
Consistency is a critical factor in determining email marketing campaign success. Send too many emails, and customers become annoyed. Send too few, and you won’t build a connection with customers and prospects. Using data helps you know where you fall on this spectrum, rather than relying solely on your instinct or what you may think your customers want; ultimately, the numbers don’t lie.
Tom Kmett is a Marketing Operations Specialist at Connectivity
