What makes for an effective personalised email marketing campaign?
Personalised email marketing is a proven success for many businesses that want to improve their online advertising/marketing with one study showing that developing a good personalised email campaign can result in a 14% uplift in sales (EConsultancy, 2014). Email still remains the most powerful personalised channel of communication in the business world (78%), which makes it vitally important for most businesses to have an effective personalised email marketing strategy (Kanda, 2015).
However, to counter balance the impressive statistics above and whilst accepting email personalisation is an important element for developing strong online strategy, it has been reported that only 5% of companies are actually using personalisation ‘extensively’ (Econsultancy, 2014). This is partly due to the fact that 60% of companies admit that they struggle to personalise content in real time, and it’s clear that there is a confusion about how to successfully execute it.
This blog is going to identify a few key strategies/tactics that companies should consider when trying to create a personalised email programme supported by some examples of how and where it has been particularly effective. In doing so it will look also into to some its potential drawbacks that may arise.
The first tactic a business should consider is that it needs to ask the right questions.
By doing this, a business is able to segment their customers into different categories, ultimately allowing the business to make the emails they send to their customers more personalised and more importantly relevant. Just asking simple questions to your customers such as what are the reasons for them entering your website, can result in them giving the company useful insight into their consumer patterns and other personal data allowing the company therefore to start to build a relationship with a potential customer resulting in that customer becoming a user/subscriber to the company’s personalised targeted email. It’s the start of the marketing chain.
One good example where this has been particularly effective was for the business Paper Style, who are a small wedding planner business. When an individual became interested in the business and accessed their company website, they entered their email in to the company’s subscription list, and a series of emails were sent out to identify whether they were enquiring about a wedding for themselves or for a friend as shown below. In other words, they were targeted questions.
As soon as the reason behind the interest was established, the customers were segmented in to one of the two categories. This then enabled the company to instigate a personalised email campaign the results of which were outstanding with open rates increasing by 244%, email click rates by 161% and their revenue per mailing increase by 330% (Taylor, 2014).
A second important factor that might be considered when developing personalised emails is the time and location.
It is no secret that there are certain times where customers are most likely to engage and respond to a personalised email, so this should really be considered when sending these emails. Below is a table showcasing that the most effective time to send an email to a customer is in the evening. The more people that interact (Click on the email), the higher the potential revenue will be for the business.
As clearly shown in this pie chart, this particular research identified the highest response rates were between 8pm and 12am presumably when the frenetic working day had finished and companies were able to take stock and deal with the administrative issues of the company. This graph is based on a study conducted by Experian (Day, 2012).
When creating a personalised email campaign for customers and third strategy to be considered might be to enable automated behavioural trigger emails.
Do you ever get an email from Facebook when you have not been online for 5 days? This is Facebook’s trigger email, and it is a very effective way to increase your email open rates. According to research by Forrester research, trigger based email marketing campaigns can generate 4x more revenue and 18x greater profits. Sales are rarely made in one conversational transaction and the power of effective follow up should not be underestimated. Often potential customer/consumers cannot make their minds up on the first sale approach and a well-constructed follow up with frequently close the sale. But trigger emails can be potentially time consuming and an administrative headache for small companies who might be unable to track the huge amount of emails and therefore specialist companies have been set up to deal with this need
One of these specialists is GetVero.com. Through this website, a company is able to set a certain time period in which a trigger email is sent to a customer after they have not interacted in their email or website over a certain time (Vero, 2016).
Further reading on the benefits of personalised email campaigns and how to make them more effective can be found in the following 2 links:
https://emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-tutorial/personalized-email.aspx
https://econsultancy.com/blog/10301-to-use-or-not-to-use-personalisation-in-email-marketing/
Whilst personalised emails are important there are some negative issues with them. Firstly, some recipients object to the fact that they are receiving personalised emails. They see it as breach of their personal space and are irritated that someone that they haven’t met are emailing them in a personalised way. They wish to remain simply private and will on receipt of the email actually become less disposed to purchase the product /service promoted.
Receiving non-relevant email information might irritate other recipients. Before the company has even ascertained exactly what the customer might want they are calling them by their name. This might well lead to the individual having an instant negative opinion to the company. More examples of the potential negative effects of personalised email marketing can be found in the link below
References
Collwin, S. (2013). Triggered Email Campaigns [Infographic] – Smart Insights Digital Marketing Advice. [online] Smart Insights. Available at: http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/behavioural-email-marketing/triggered-email-campaigns-infographic/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].
Day, A. (2012). The Best Times to Send Email Marketing Campaigns | VerticalResponse Blog. [online] Vertical Response Blog. Available at: http://www.verticalresponse.com/blog/best-time-send-email-marketing-campaign/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].
Econsultancy. (2014). Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing: Why Marketing Should Be Personal. [online] Available at: https://econsultancy.com/reports/quarterly-digital-intelligence-briefing-why-marketing-should-be-personal/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].
Kanda, Y. (2015). Everything is personal. [online] Slideshare.net. Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/yaelkander/everything-is-personal [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].
MacDonald, S. (2014). Grow Your Business with Trigger Based Email Marketing. [online] www.emarketeer.com. Available at: http://www.emarketeer.com/blog/trigger-based-email-marketing-campaigns/ [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].
Marketingcharts.com. (2012). Chart/table from: Most Emails Deployed in the Morning – But Best Results Seen in the Evening. [online] Available at: http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/most-emails-deployed-in-the-morning-but-best-results-seen-in-the-evening-27742/attachment/experian-email-marketing-time-of-day-performance-in-q4-2012-mar2013/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].
Taylor, M. (2014). 5 Creative Ways Small Businesses are Using Marketing Automation | Venture Harbour. [online] Venture Harbour. Available at: https://www.ventureharbour.com/5-creative-ways-small-businesses-using-marketing-automation/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].
Vero. (2016). Home – Vero. [online] Available at: http://www.getvero.com/ [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].