How to Connect Your Customers for More Targeted Emails
Ever feel like your emails are falling on deaf ears (or eyes, as it were)? Your open rates are low and your click through rate is even lower. As a marketer, nothing is more frustrating than feeling your messages are not getting through.
Email marketing has come a long way since inception. Now, there are spam filters to work around, noise to compete with, and tabs to contend with. It’s a tough task but can also pay big dividends when it’s done right.
Make your 2015 more profitable with these innovative email marketing tips that will help you get your messages in front of more customers.
Break It Down
Perhaps the biggest mistake email marketers have made in the past is not breaking lists into segments. Most small and medium sized businesses send mass messages with the hope that they’ll resonate with at least a portion of their audience.
This is damaging. It hurts the relationship with the customer by showing that your business doesn’t care about his or her personal needs. Your customer will feel like you’re just trying to make another sale instead of help him or her with a specific need.
Break your lists into targeted segments. Then, send each segment a personal email with a benefit-driven message specific only to their needs and demands.
Integrate Your Email with Other Technology
To funnel your messages and create a stronger inbox-based relationship with your customers, integrate your email marketing with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool.
Your CRM is the lifeline to your customer relationships. Make it easy on your sales team by integrating programs, such as MailChimp, with an app that’s already tracking each step in the customer sales cycle.Insightly integrates with MailChimp and is planning to expand email options with new mass email features. These new and existing features will make it as easy as possible to nurture leads and strengthen customer connections.
Personalize The Message
Your customers don’t want to get an email from a company. They want to get an email from a person in your company.
In 2015, personalization will become exponentially more important. It’s the way around the spam filters and into the hearts of your customers. There are a few ways you can personalize your messages:
- Add the first name to the subject line. Most email marketing programs make this fairly intuitive and easy.
- Pay attention to the email address. Your reader will notice if your email comes from a “no-reply” email address or a personal one. Whenever possible, send your emails from a personal email address.
- Reiterate the first name in the body of the email. Keep your reader feeling like your marketing message is written directly for him by reiterating his first name in the body of the email.
The more personal you can make your emails look and feel, the better your email marketing efforts will be received.
Takeaway
If you want your email marketing to work harder for your business, stop sending messages meant for a general audience.
Segment your lists and target your messaging to each group of customer’s unique needs. Make an effort to keep your emails as personal as possible by focusing on creating a stronger human-to-human approach. In the end, you’ll be able to send emails to the right people at the right time with the right message, solidifying a strong customer connection.
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources and business news. Megan has several years of experience on the topics of small business marketing, copywriting, SEO, online conversions and social media. Megan spends much of her time establishing new relationships for ChamberofCommerce.com, publishing weekly newsletters educating small business on the importance of web presence, and contributing to a number of publications on the web. Megan can be reached at megan@chamberofcommerce.com.
