Email remains the most reliable and customer-preferred method of digital brand communication. It wins over other channels by far and across all generations of professionals, from Boomers through to Gen X.
But the reality is that email inboxes are crowded. The average professional sorts through more than 100 emails every day, and generic messages simply won’t grab anyone’s attention. Instead, they’ll get deleted before recipients even know what they’re about.
To get noticed, and even more importantly, to earn engagement, companies need data-driven email marketing. Why? Because it enables marketing teams to craft email strategies that are personalized and targeted to specific audience segments and even individual prospects or customers.
Further, data allows marketers to continually monitor and analyze the effectiveness of email campaigns, and make adjustments in near real-time so results can be optimized.
The foundation of data-driven email marketing lies in collecting accurate data. Adopt a centralized data management system (for example: a CRM system) and integrate it with your email marketing platform for a seamless flow of customer data across internal systems, and so that data is automatically updated, accurate, and consistent when used in email campaigns.
We know that generic emails don’t get noticed by today’s business audiences. To grab their attention, you need a more personalized approach. Segmenting your email lists by shared attributes enables you to ensure every email message you send is hyper-relevant for its recipients.
For example: You might segment a list by demographic attributes, like location, or business attributes, like industry or area of expertise. Alternatively, you might use behavioral segmentation strategies, like creating a list of recipients who have attended past events or downloaded certain content.
The benefit of modern email marketing tools is that you can do all this rather easily as long as you have step one—solid data collection processes—already in place.
A personalized email is more than just addressing the recipient by name. Use data to go deeper and tailor content based on a recipient’s behavior, past interactions, and preferences to significantly increase the chance of engagement.
Truly personal touches, from personalized product recommendations to dynamic content customized for individual recipients (or groups), make emails stand out. In fact, 90% of consumers say personalization is appealing for them, and 80% are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences.
Good data-driven email marketing never rests on its laurels. Perform regular A/B testing of your email content, from subject lines to CTAs, to help identify what’s resonating with your audience and eliminate what isn’t.
Using A/B testing insights, you can continually refine your approach and evolve your strategy so that your email content never gets stale or out of touch with new preferences and trends.
Automation is what allows companies to execute email marketing at scale, and it’s a key part of any good data-driven strategy. Automate drip campaigns and behavior-triggered emails to send timely content and capture the interest of prospects and customers while intent is high.
By setting up systems that recognize and act on user interactions, you increase the likelihood your emails will drive desired actions.
Recipient feedback is your most direct and accurate source of insight about your email marketing effectiveness. Incorporate simple feedback loops into your email messages (it can be a very simple rating scale, like the example below) and use the insights to improve.
Periodically, and especially with highly engaged audiences, you can send out longer surveys and ask for more extensive feedback, both on your emails and other important topics related to your business.
With data comes responsibility. Ensure that your data-driven email marketing practices comply with regulations like GDPR or CAN-SPAM. As these standards evolve, so should your practices, ensuring you’re always aligned with laws and regulations, thus building trust with your recipients and partners.
The “data-driven” part of data-driven marketing isn’t a one-off task—it’s continuous. Regularly monitor the key metrics we covered earlier in this article, and implement a reporting process to share insights with important members of your team. Actively tracking data metrics provides actionable insight that can guide your future strategies and campaigns in an objective, reliable way.
As you can tell, executing a data-driven email marketing strategy requires significant time, resources, and expertise. For this reason, many companies choose to outsource to an email marketing company. If you feel like you can’t execute a quality strategy internally, your best option is to find a service provider who can. Almost always, the added ROI you’ll get from outsourcing far outweighs the initial cost.
As you can tell, executing a data-driven email marketing strategy requires significant time, resources, and expertise. For this reason, many companies choose to outsource to an email marketing company. If you feel like you can’t execute a quality strategy internally, your best option is to find a service provider who can. Almost always, the added ROI you’ll get from outsourcing far outweighs the initial cost.
Now you know exactly what it takes to implement a data-driven email marketing strategy that will deliver results.And if you need support, Televerde is here to help.
Our industry-leading marketing, sales, and customer experience solutions help companies in all industries connect with their target audiences and win more sales. Get in touch with our team to learn more about how we can help your business grow.
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