Email Marketing With Context
Posted on December 23, 2011 by Greg No Comments
For better, or worse, it’s easy to launch an email marketing campaign. While there are plenty of ways to improve an email marketing campaign, sending an email campaign where each of the emails has context is, however, more difficult.
When we draft a single email to a single recipient it’s most relevant. We’ve crafted a message intended for one, specific person. It’s hopefully going to be right on target. But once we start sending the same email to more than one person (cc) we run the risk of the message becoming diluted. And when we use email campaign software to send a “blast” we run the risk of being totally irrelevant for an uncomfortably large number of people.
So how do we remain relevant while embarking on an email marketing campaign?
- List segmentation is one of the easiest ways to begin delivering more relevant email campaigns. It’s easy to do in most email campaign software. For example, we can segment our email marketing lists between clients and prospects
- Personalization is another easy way to make emails more relevant. Personalization increases engagement with emails. A/B testing can help you determine whether personalization is contributing to a higher conversion rate. By conversion I mean achieving a desired outcome (i.e., the recipient clicked on a link and continued interacting with you, which ultimately lead to a sale). Personalization can be using the recipients name, or even using personalized fields in an email where personalized content is inserted (i.e., information about a product or category that is relevant to that contact). We’ve got details on our prospects. Let’s use them!
- Making it look great on mobile is increasingly a factor for improved interaction rates and creating a optimal customer experience. 81% of smartphone users are checking their email. How does our email campaign look on the iPhone? Are we sending an email that is relevant for the smartphone user? How can that mobile user take immediate action?
- A/B Testing is another effective way to find out what’s most relevant for your recipients. Yes, it seems obvious. But it’s surprising how many marketing organizations simply don’t find the time to test different subject lines, different content, and landing page layouts. Test, rinse, repeat!
What Triggers An Email Campaign?
We build email campaigns for different reasons. Most of the time they’re on our content calendars.
- Monthly newsletter
- Product announcements
- Summary of blog posts
But we can also define certain events that will trigger an email campaign:
- Product inquiries - Gathering the email addresses for each of the product inquires during the course of a month, week, day. Send them an email that is contextually relevant.
- Purchases - Same as above, except for purchases. These are real, live customers who could potentially be ripe for an up sell or cross sell.
- Downloads from Web site – What happens when someone downloads a case study, whitepaper, or anything else from our Web site. Does it generate a prospect list for sales? It may be more appropriate if it generates an email campaign. Once the prospect has been softened up, then they can be thrown over the wall to sales.
Software For Making Email Campaigns More Contextually Relevant
There are increasingly more software solutions for managing email marketing. Marketing automation is a relatively new buzzword out there. Check out Marketing Automation Software Guide for cogent breakdowns on who’s who. Marketing automation software is going to cost more money. But if you’ve got budget and people to manage it, it may well be worth the effort.
Still, a lot of contextual relevancy can still be baked into good old-fashioned (inexpensive) email marketing. It simply takes some planning and creativity.
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About Greg Jordan
Greg is the Managing Director of Greg Jordan Design. He enjoys writing about marketing, sales, and the effect of online marketing on growing businesses.
Outside of work Greg enjoys time with his two children, two+ friends, photography, flying, and cycling.
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