As a marketer, you know how important it is to leverage data to increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Most companies have come to realize that locating and collecting data isn’t that hard. But the challenge lies in finding the most useful insights that can drive your marketing campaigns to the next level.
When it comes to email marketing, the stakes are high. Research shows that email marketing has the highest return on your investment (ROI) of any marketing channel. But some brands are supercharging that ROI even further by employing innovative data strategies.
What Data is Available for Email Marketing?
While there is more data than ever at hand for use in digital marketing, there are a few types that will give your business a good place to start.
Demographic Data
When you interact with your audience, you have many opportunities to collect basic information, such as names, ages, gender, and location. Some of this data can be collected from social media platforms or when a customer buys something from you or signs up for your service.
Behavioral Data
Another reliable indicator of consumer interest is behavioral data. This refers to things like email open rates, cart abandonment rates, and even online browsing data.
Transactional Data
Whether you are an eCommerce business or a brick and mortar store, you likely have several ways to collect some transactional data. For online sales, when was the last time a customer purchased something? How much did they spend? What did they buy?
Consumer Preference
Consumer preference data needs to remain current because people’s likes and dislikes change over time. But you can use this information to determine what a consumer is currently shopping for or even to guess their needs.
How to Use Data to Optimize Your Email Marketing Strategy
Data is only useful when you leverage it to reach more people, with a stronger message than before. Here are some of the ways that brands are accomplishing this and supercharging their ROI at the same time.
Segmentation
Sending the same email message out to everyone is one tactic, but it may not be the most effective way to reach your audience. With a wealth of customer data at your fingertips, you can create some highly targeted segments and send out more meaningful messages.
According to Weidert Group, segmented email campaigns achieve 101% more clicks and 14% higher open rates than non-segmented ones.
Personalization
Today’s consumers overwhelmingly prefer personalization when they shop. It saves time, and it just feels, well, more personal. To that end, you can use the data you have to include a customer’s name in the subject line of your email instead of “Hello There Friend!”
This is a strategy that brands like Amazon and Experian have been using with great success. According to SuperOffice, personalization can generate $20 in ROI for every $1 invested, and personalizing email subject lines can increase open rates by 16%.
Timeliness
When emails don’t hit inboxes at the right time, they’re not going to get the results a business wants and needs. Data analytics can help your brand improve its timing with things like A/B testing. Specifically, what day or time of day is optimal for your customers?
Online retailer Rakuten also runs a leading library and school reading platform called Rakuten OverDrive. To improve its email marketing efforts, the company used Google Aalytics data to determine customer digital communication preferences. This allowed it to create a more engaging and timely email newsletter.
Automation
Finally, many of the most effective emails are “triggered” by some event or another. A customer might abandon a shopping cart, make a repeat purchase, or visit your store and fill out a comment card.
According to Datorama, Travel Money Oz is a company that has perfected using automation to learn how to know your customer needs and react in real-time. They’ve done this by quickly re-engaging visitors that abandon shopping carts with a timely email message. The results were impressive, with a 175% increase in email open rates, a 9x increase in click-through rates, and a 12% increase in sales.
Email marketing is already a winning strategy for many businesses, but the right use of data can provide additional focus to those efforts. Even better, targeted, and personalized email marketing campaigns allow marketers to tailor their message to the wants and needs of consumers and boost business results at the same time.
