Email marketing is under pressure. We've got the highest ROI in the digital toolbox, but we are victims of our own success. That success in earning revenue makes it seem like we don't need investment. In fact, in our quest to increase, or even maintain revenue, we battle overflowing inboxes, subscriber fatigue and inbox management tools determined to keep marketing messages away from customer eyes.
The key to connecting with customers and reaching the inbox is engagement. Sending the right message at the right time to the right person - and delighting subscribers every time. The only way to do that is to capture and utilize data that enables segmentation and multi touch conversations.
At the DMA 2011 annual conference in Boston, I lead a two day email marketing workshop where industry-leading speaker after speaker emphasized the importance of data management to successful email and digital marketing.
- Subscribers have high expectations. You want them to provide an email address and tell you what they like? You gotta use that data to customize experiences and send truly relevant messages.
- You want great design and creative that performs? You gotta have a strategy to put the right content in front of the right people.
- You want to increase revenue? Don't send more generic messages. Send more custom and personal messages, timed to the lifecycle moments when subscribers are ready to engage and buy.
- You want to reach the inbox? You gotta have a file full of active subscribers - who open, click and engage with your messages. If not, the ISP/receivers like Yahoo!, Gmail and Hotmail - along with their counterparts at smaller ISPs and corporations the world over - will block your messages or slow down delivery.
Almost every serious email marketer uses data to customize some messages. Most send a welcome message, post purchase promotions or a renewal reminder. Many send event invites that reflect the recipient's firmographics (job title, industry, geography) and if the recipient attended last year. Many personalize the salutation, target by geography or include the name of the product owned.
In the workshop, we encouraged marketers to take it up a notch or two. We talked about the importance of setting priorities. (We also acknowledged how hard it can be set priorities. We all want to test everything and tap a lot of technology and social data. Unfortunately, there are those realities of time, talents and treasure!)
Where can your customization efforts have the most impact on your business objectives? Sometimes, it's not your best customers who need more customization or personalized attention. They are already fans of your products and brand. Test some additional content or cadence customization with the next band of customers - those who purchase less frequently, own fewer products or are spending less with each transaction.
Consider that you will have a spectrum of message types, each with a differently level of customization. Not all customers have the same value to you, and so it's okay that some customers get more custom messages and fewer generic ones. If you look at your total calendar, try to have at least 10%-15% of your messages include some customized content. Be sure to reflect it in your subject lines. That will help ensure that you make an impression often enough to keep subscriber interest high.
Aprimo applications help by giving you visually simple methods of identifying populations and segments. You can quickly see the counts by segment. And you will quickly understand how much unique creative you need to address the needs of those various segments. Test and learn from the segmentations you choose. The best ones can be automated. Be aware, however, that this notion of "set it and forget it" has risks. Set, but don't forget. Be sure to circle back with every automated segmentation you run at least monthly. Things change fast in our socially connected world, and priorities shift internally as well. Be sure those are the right messages sent at the right stage of the lifecycle.
Once you have your segmentations established, start to think in terms of conversations. At Aprimo, we call this a Dialogue. It's a multi touch campaign - and can also be multi-channel. Again, the simple design interface lets you quickly map out a conversation. Allow response and behavior to dictate the next step of the conversation, as well as subscriber preference. It's a myth to think that every email conversation has to be long term. Focus instead on moments in the lifecycle when customers are in market. This might be after a transaction, during a free trial period, in a discovery or research phase, just before or after renewal and during events. When the customer is engaged, you can send more messages in more channels to address how they interact with your brand across email, SMS, social and retail/in person.
Attendees at the DMA workshop debated whether self-reported, demographic or behavioral data was "best." Of course, the answer is that it depends on your marketing objective, the customer profile and the lifecycle stage. However, we all agreed that the challenge is to use all three kinds of data in ways that optimize the customization and personalization of the messaging. If I know you are male but you always buy women's jewelry, that is a powerful combination of demographic and behavior data that helps marketers help the customer.
Remember always that while automation and integrated marketing software DOES things for you really well, it does NOT think for you. All the technology in the world cannot replace smart strategy and compelling creative. This is one of the reasons so many marketers rely on customer personas to guide the market approach. Personas personalize the customer - turn them from cold, distant data into real, live people. Perhaps more importantly, personas give us a common language and common understanding of our customers so that we can stay focused on their needs, not what we've always done or even what is cool or hot at the moment.
Think of segmentation as an ecosystem that is in continuous motion. Start with logical segments for your business, then target the right audiences and then personalize the message. There are many types of lifecycle segment opportunities - we have customers with thousands of automated segmentations running. Within each, typically 5-6 segments per mailing is right; providing a personal experience without diffusing the population too much. Remember, that once you segment the larger group, you then target customers within it. Different parameters and content blocks in the template customize the sub-segments further. Map your customer touch points along this type of continuum to reach your marketing objectives.
It's often hard for marketers to get their arms around how to "be more relevant." Yet, that is exactly the challenge ahead. I recommend starting now. Put on your audience hat and audit your program content, frequency and value. Be tough on yourself. Are you truly helping your subscribers, or just sending batches of similar offers at a break neck pace? Are you truly listening to subscriber behavior and demographics, or are you continually blathering on about yourself and your products? Are you segmenting your file in order to respond to the needs of various types of subscribers?
Test some new approaches and focus on subject lines, too. Be sure that your brand impact is high in order to claim whatever loyalty you have built over time. Marketers have always known this level of attention and care to our email and digital programs is important; we just haven't always done anything about it. Now, we must act. The technology is ready.
If you are interested in the full deck from my (four hour!) session on data management at the DMA this year, please just email me and I'll be happy to share. My thanks to the DMA and the other workshop speakers for the chance to participate again this year. As always, the DMA Annual event is one of the largest and most engaging marketing events of the year.