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Email Personalization: Collect, Segment, and Use Customer Data

Email Personalization: Collect, Segment, and Use Customer Data

Have you ever walked into your local coffee shop and the barista knows your name, or even better, remembers your usual order? Imagine they say something like “Hey Dan! Medium latte with one raw sugar and 2%, right?” Yes, exactly! What a great feeling it is to be recognized. The same concept goes for email marketing. Let’s be honest; no one enjoys feeling like they’re being marketed to. So as a marketer, we try to create relationships that feel more personal. One of the best ways to do this is via personalization in emails. Email personalization is vital in email marketing, especially for e-commerce companies. However, regardless of what kind of business you are running, email personalization can make a huge difference. 

When you collect data on customer behaviors, you can find out what they are interested in, which also helps you personalize an email tailored to their behavior and interest. Additionally, email personalization is proven to increase email open rates, click-thru rates, sales, and more. According to research by Experian, personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates than non-personalized emails. People are more likely to open an email with their name in it or an email that is relevant to their interests than emails which don’t partake in either. Email personalization is an important technique to participate in, and here’s how you can utilize it.

Collect Customer Data

The first thing you want to do is make sure you are noting customer’s/subscriber’s attributes and/or their actions. This data could be as simple as asking for their name, location, interests, and birthday in the subscription sign-up form. You can also collect behavior information such as customer’s past actions, on-site behavior, and purchasing patterns. The more you know, the better you can communicate.

Segment Your Data

Now that you’ve meticulously collected your customers’ data, what do you do with it? You segment it. Segmentation is splitting up your email list/data into groups or segments based on what you know about each person. These groups can be based on anything. A few examples are gender, location, age, and shopping habits. You then send each segment of people a personalized email based off of their segment. If you get your segmentation right, your audience should receive relevant emails filled with info they actually want or are interested in. Please read our previous blog post on email segmentation for more information.

Use Email Personalization

You can send emails based on the data you have collected about your customers. One of the basic ways to use email personalization is in the subject line. A personalized subject line will have a positive impact on your open rates. The subject line is one of the first things your recipients see when they look at their inbox. Another way to use email personalization is in the body. Whenever it makes sense, try using personalized info inside the email. You spent time collecting data about your customers; use it!

Most email service providers like Mailchimp give users the ability to easily segment their email list using their software making email personalization much easier to perform. Email personalization takes a bit of time and effort, however, once you put in the work you will be reaping the benefits. If you have any questions about email personalization, leave a comment below.

Mailing Lists – How do I segment my data?

Mailing Lists – How do I segment my data?

When you are embarking on an e-marketing campaign, it’s easy to get carried away once you’ve accumulated a shed load of data and start firing off e-mails left right and centre, with no real strategy in place to segment your data into mailing lists. What businesses don’t take into consideration though, is how detrimental this could be to their campaigns.

Ultimately, your goal when it comes to e-marketing is to increase your ROI – did you know that 39% of e-marketers that practice list segmentation see better open rates? Keep reading for more tips on how to best segment your data into mailing lists!

Segmenting into mailing lists

Firstly, you need to determine how you will be segmenting your data. This can be done through identifying and understanding your industry; by breaking down your data into segmented lists you can tailor your content, and through gaining an understanding of how to do this, your e-marketing campaign can become more of a success than you ever could have imagined.

Geo-targeting

Have you considered how wide-reaching your market is? One of the most successful ways businesses should be segmenting their data is geographically; consider how compelling your targeted e-marketing campaign could be when you factor local languages, events and, most importantly, the time difference. Your business may be based here in the United Kingdom, but if 40% of contacts on your mailing lists are based in the USA, scheduling an e-marketing campaign to land at 10:00am GMT will be ignored by almost half, as they are most likely to be asleep.

History

Within your mailing lists, you will be able to monitor the behaviour of your consumers and use this historical information to tailor content accordingly. For example, one of your newly segmented mailing lists could contain the clients who may not have visited your website for a while. These kinds of campaigns really work through tailoring the content specific to the audience you are reaching out to, increasing the email relevance, open rates etc.

Don’t Over Complicate Your Segmentation

It’s important to remember that you shouldn’t over complicate the segmentation of your mailing lists as this could have a negative impact on your e-marketing campaigns, leaving you with a selection of mailing lists with a lack of positive prospects. Having clear objectives on how you will be segmenting your data for your industry will allow for the best results out of your e-marketing campaign.

At MIB Business Data we understand the importance of concentrated data through segmented mailing lists. Are you looking to find out more about how e-mail marketing could really work for your business? Download MIB Business Data’s whitepaper here.

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