Digital Marketing: Emails They Can’t Ignore

Emails They Can't Ignore

When it comes to generating results, targeted marketing wins the day hands down. The differences between this tightly-focused approach to customer acquisition and yesterday’s scattershot efforts is striking.

Consider, for instance, the transformation impacting the world of email marketing. This messaging system, once the reigning champ of scattershot, hope-you-get-opened efforts is now fine-tuned and extremely well-targeted. The results speak for themselves.

Well-targeted, of course, translates to more frequently opened — which in turn improves sales figures by a generous margin. The new, higher open rates are the result of precision-implemented behavior-targeted emails. Essentially, these behavior-driven messages are custom-designed responses to specific actions performed by website visitors. Emails with ‘you’ written all over them – a signal that announces – “We’re paying close attention to you.”

What constitutes an effective targeted email? It begins with message design – sympathetic content delivered expediently and serving as a follow-up to a specific user action. The number of possible user actions is virtually unlimited. One possibility is demonstrated interest in an offer. A targeted email would pertain to the offer, displaying a clear reference in the subject line. Other types of user actions suitable for targeted email responses include opened emails, clicked links and pages, previous website visits (recent or distant).

Behavior-targeted emails needn’t restrict themselves to yet-to-be customers, however. Established customers, whether long-ago, ongoing, or brand spanking new should be equally catered to. Messages aligned with purchased products, date of last purchase, and other customer-oriented criteria can spark abundant interest in this group.

The important point to remember is that customization is essential. Every email distributed must be a personalized follow-up that acknowledges and addresses a previous behavior. By establishing this connection, brand marketers tip the open email to sales ratio generously in their favor.

If you have any questions or comments about behavior-targeted email marketing, or about any other brand-related topic, feel free to send them our way.