A targeted email is basically a personalised message that you send to a particular group within your mailing list. These emails are usually customised and can deliver valuable offers or information to whoever is subscribed to your newsletter. Targeted email marketing is very similar to segmenting your mailing list. You basically divide your subscribers based on their age, gender, occupation, and more.
In other words, you will be targeting certain audiences with certain content, which can help to greatly boost your brand’s recognition and sales.
In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of targeted email marketing, its types, and how to nail it.
Benefits of Targeted Email Marketing
Apart from being opened more often than regular emails, targeting email marketing also comes with the following pros:
Relevancy
Targeted email marketing delivers content that matches the needs and interests of specific groups of people. As a result, recipients of your emails will start to think of your brand as a trustworthy as well as a relevant source of products, services, and information.
Response
If a user gets a relevant offer, they are more likely to open the email, click the link and head to your website.
Revenue
According to numerous studies, around 87% of marketers use targeted email marketing to reach and advertise to their customers. This makes it a great way of boosting your revenue.
Bonding
Consistently addressing people who subscribed to you with targeted email marketing will show that you care about them and their needs.
In other words, it can be a nice way to amass a thankful, loyal audience that will always come back for more products and services and spread the word about your brand with their friends and family.
Retention
Statistics have long proven that current customers are 50% more likely to purchase your future products compared to new customers. On top of that, you already have a good idea of what their preferences are, so you can accurately target them each.
Types of Email Targeting
Gender Targeted Email Marketing
As the name suggests, you basically split your existing audience based on their gender. For example, let’s say your business specialises in the sales of clothing. Now, it would be weird if you send an email campaign about a new bra to your male segment, would it? And the opposite is true.
Geographic Targeted Email Marketing
We think we’ve already established that personalisation is key to increasing the open rates of your emails. But, what’s better than personalisation?
Real-time personalisation.
Using real-time data allows you to always be one step ahead of both the competition and your clients.
Nowadays, it is a common occurrence for companies to rely on real-time geographic data in their targeted email marketing. It allows them to send the right customised emails to the right people.
It would be awkward if you send a Glasgow-specific offer to your London-based customers now, wouldn’t it?
Still, it is a great way of getting people to visit your store(s) and buy whatever you offer. If we were to really boil it all down, location-based targeted email marketing has three main advantages, which are:
- If you have a physical store, this might be a great way of boosting the traffic to it.
- You get to better communicate with your customers.
- A significant increase in the number of sales.
So, if you want your business to flourish both online and in real life (in case you have a physical store), targeted email marketing based on location is the way to go.
Interest Targeted Email Marketing
There are many businesses that offer numerous products and services, with each being aimed at a different type of people.
So, segmenting your subscribers’ list based on their interests is nothing but a great way of boosting the chances of them responding.
How you understand their interests and how well you implement them into your campaign(s) is what sets you apart from other businesses.
One way of knowing what sort of product or service they might want is how they interact with your brand.
Segment After They Join Your List
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that you run an online store that sells t-shirts. Your subscriber list probably includes people who are only interested in graphic tees, while another group is solely into polo t-shirts, etc.
If you send all of these people the same emails every time, do you think that you’ll get a decent response?
The answer is no.
If you don’t determine the interests of specific groups within your email list and you cater to those interests, you’re not going to improve.
Segment Them According to The Call to Action in Your Email
If the subscriber sees an email with a bunch of links with each leading to a different kind of shirt and they choose to click on graphic tees, then it might be a good idea to label them as someone who is interested in graphic tees.
The moment you release new graphic tees, email them about it.
Segment Before They Join Your List
Of course, a lot of email segmentation happens after people join your email list. However, there are times where you’d want to segment them before they even get on your list.
Why? You might wonder.
Well, it is because some interests can be understood at an early stage.
Say, for example, you’re selling a course about self-improvement. Now, people are different in many ways, including which areas of their lives they want to be improved. They each have unique goals that are in some way specific to them.
So, in order to deliver a truly personalised experience for your subscribers, you need to know what category they fall into.
One way of pulling this off is by doing segmentation on the landing page itself. This helps you to better understand the interests of your leads as well as improving your email’s overall conversion rate.
Once someone visits your landing page, they should be welcomed with an offer that is best catered to their interests and needs. In other words, your sole aim should be to get quality leads.
Instead of throwing money and time into the promotion of your landing page to an irrelevant audience, you should go the other way around instead.
Engagement Targeted Email Marketing
It is very much natural for you to have subscribers that may be huge fans of your emails, and as a result, they open each and every one of them, while others might only open one out of a hundred if they feel like it.
So, can you segment emails solely based on this information?
Yes.
Targeting email marketing based on engagement is a great way of getting more subscribers to click on your emails. Popular email marketing tools such as Constant Contact, Aweber, and MailChimp come with features that are catered to this exact kind of personalisation.
They allow you to segment your subscribers’ list based on the type of activity they exhibit.
So, if you wish for a fresh, responsive email list, you may want to create a dedicated email for dormant or inactive subscribers. Basically, an attempt to get them interested again, in one way or another.
Once you’ve successfully segmented those subscribers who have the least engagement with your content, you can email them to try and re-establish some sort of connection. One way of doing this is by offering them a strong reason to stick around, such as a promo code or something.
However, if this still doesn’t get them to interact with your emails and they don’t take any action whatsoever for over a week, simply remove them from your email list. You don’t want to waste your time and money on inactive users.
Lifecycle Targeted Email Marketing
Your customers have a unique journey, they go through different stages, and you need to tailor your emails based on that.
Here is a very typical lifecycle of a customer and some ideas on how to deal with customers in each stage:
New Subscriber
Barraging newly subscribed users with sale offers right off the get-go might be a huge turn-off. Instead, send them some sort of a welcome email that includes a brief but detailed description of your brand and values.
Prospect
The proper way of dealing with clients at this stage is by including offers such as free shipping and discounts in your email in order to tempt them to complete the purchase.
First-Time Buyer
So, you’ve successfully managed to close the sale, and you have just gotten yourself a new customer. Send them a “Thank You” email that includes tutorials on how to use the product, for example.
Cart-Abandoner:
The reasons for which a user fails to finalise the order are many. One way of pushing them to complete it is by sending them an email that focuses on the product or products that they were interested in with the addition of a special offer.
Loyal Customer
When at this stage, users will be very familiar with your products and services to the point where they would most likely recommend them to their friends and family.
A good way of being appreciative of this kind of client is by establishing a loyalty program. You can promise them early access to product releases, for example.
How to Do Targeted Email Marketing
Here’s how to run targeted email marketing campaigns effectively:
Collect Your Database
There’s no point in running a target email marketing campaign if your mailing list is empty. Use subscription forms to collect as many addresses as humanly possible.
Moreover, don’t miss out on other important pieces of data such as phone numbers, birth dates, job titles and more.
Define Customer Personas
Get an idea of who you’re marketing to. Think of your audience in regard to their age, location, interests and more. This enables you to establish a customer persona or many, helping you to create content that is relevant to most of them.
Segment Your Mailing List
Divide your list into distinguishable segments to better communicate with users.
Create Targeted Content
Continuously create and adjust content based on the preferences and needs of the different groups within your mailing list.
Can’t Do It Yourself? We’re Here to Help.
Segmenting your list and running a targeted email marketing campaign can be overwhelming, which is why our UK email marketing agency is always ready to help. Book in a call now.
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