How to Get Started with Data-Driven Email Marketing

Anyone who has spent even an hour researching what methods of marketing to focus on will have discovered the importance of email marketing. It’s a direct way to keep in touch with your audience and customers, develop that relationship, and offer them exclusive information and offers. It’s quick and easy to implement, and if done right, is still incredibly effective despite the overwhelming number of emails we all receive each day.

So, how do we ensure our emails stay effective, despite the growing number of emails in our inboxes?

Get Data-Driven

There are more tools available for email marketers than ever before to help you perfect your emails and up your open and conversion rates, so you have no excuses not to gather the right data, analyze it, and create great emails your customers want to open. Of course, implementing these tools and creating a strategy from your data isn’t always straightforward, so read on to find out how to get started with data-driven email marketing.

Plan Your Strategy

If you jump in and start changing and tweaking things without a plan you won’t know what works and what doesn’t. That’s why you need to pause now and think about what your emails are doing now, what data you can leverage to increase the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns, and what your goals are. Be specific about the results you want to see; look to increase open rates by 10%, rather than simply “improve” open rates. Establish where you are now and where you want to be so you can plan for the journey between.

If you want to increase your conversion rates (sales directly from your email marketing efforts) you need to understand what information your customers need to make a purchase and what hurdles you need to help them overcome. If you have a product for $19.99, it may only take an email or sequence of three for them to make a decision, but if you’re trying to sell a product for $397 or more, your email sequence will need to be significantly longer. You will need to test this to know what works best for your product and audience.

Most email clients offer list segmenting nowadays, and it’s an important tool in talking to specific segments of your audience and ensuring they receive the information they are interested in and need to learn. For example, if you are an online store selling fishing supplies you may have customers who are beginners, intermediate, and advanced. If you send a beginner an email that targets the advanced anglers, they might not open your next email (and vice versa). When you segment your list you can send emails to individual lists to ensure they feel like they’re getting personalized emails.

Gather the Right Data

While we’re on the topic of email clients, it’s well worth looking around for which will suit you best for your budget, the features that will best help you grow, and the data you need to gather.

Many tools now offer you the ability to ask your email list questions which will automatically segment them into new lists, or remove them from unsuitable lists, which means when you send out an email only those interested are receiving it.

You can also improve your email marketing efforts by looking at your open rates and using the automatic resend feature (if your tool has it) to resend that email to those who didn’t open it the first time.

It’s also well worth adding the customers who have made a purchase from you previously to a new list and those who have never purchased to another so you can speak to them differently.

Don’t forget to look at other data you have within your business and look at how that can apply to your email marketing campaigns. Often, your sales and IT teams have a wealth of knowledge and data that can be extremely valuable when applied to your email marketing efforts.

The average ROI (return on investment) for email marketing is a return of $44 for every $1 spent, so it really is worth investing in the right tools and knowledge you need to maximize your ROI. Stay up to date on the latest tools and technologies and don’t be afraid to test them (and any other strategy) in your email marketing, even if you’re seeing success so you can keep moving forward and improving.