The world Today is so focused on new and trending digital marketing strategies and techniques, but while AI and social media continue to buzz around us, we must not forget the digital marketing strategies that have stood the test of time, one of which is Email Marketing.
Email Marketing is your direct line to your customers and potential customers. With email marketing, we can deliver a little piece of our brand right into their inbox. What’s more, we can target very specific audiences for these marketing campaigns. This is achieved through the art of email list building and segmentation. If you are able to learn the techniques involved, you have the fuel to set your marketing campaigns on fire! So Today, we are going to empower you with Web Geeks’ own brand of Rocket fuel to help guide you through the process from list building to optimization.
Step 1 – Building and Growing your Email List
The very first step into the great beyond of email marketing is List Building. To send an email to someone, you have to know their email address; otherwise, you are just sending emails off into the vast universe that is cyberspace with only hope and a prayer that they will someday reach someone, much like a message in a bottle. So, we must accumulate a list of people to whom we can send our emails before doing anything else. The big question is – how do we build our lists? This usually involves presenting an offer and collecting email addresses as a result.
Website-based Methods
- Signup Forms– Possibly the original player when it comes to building an email list. When you like a particular company and you want to hear more about them, especially their latest offers the first thing you do is head on over to their website to sign up for their email newsletter. It’s a time-honoured tradition that will forever continue to be. Never underestimate the power of the signup form. There is a great way to turn leads into customers. You can implement these anywhere, on their own specific pages, in the Contact Us section, or as part of a dedicated landing page for your campaign. Who knows, you could even add a link to sign up in your footer – Scroll to the bottom of this page for an example.
- Pop-ups– When you visit the Web Geeks website, what is the first thing you see? A big ole picture of our founder and big kahuna popping up on your screen! That’s right, pop-ups are an in-your-face way of guiding your visitors to where you want them to go. But these don’t just have to be initiated when you land on a page. Exit Intent pop-ups can be implemented when the site detects a user is about to leave. This kindly reminds your visitors not to leave without signing up, just as you would hand out a business card in the real world.
- Gated Content– Remember that pop-up of our much-loved big kahuna? Well, it actually directs you to the chance to get your hands on our free comprehensive digital marketing E-book. You insert your details into the form, and you get a jumpstart into the world of digital marketing! And who knows, one day, you may see something exciting from us arrive in your inbox! Not that we aren’t exciting all of the time, of course. But you don’t have to offer an eBook; you could offer a cheat sheet, a template, or even some desktop wallpaper; the sky is the limit!
Social Media
- Bio/Profile Links– Normally, we add a website address in our social media profiles, yet if we think a little outside the box, it could be a good idea to add a signup to the newsletter or campaign here, too. If people follow you on social media, they are most likely to want to hear from you in other ways; this simple addition can drastically increase your signups.
- Social Media Posts– A nice and free way of collecting subscribers, create a post telling your followers about your email newsletter and provide a link, then sit back and watch your list populate.
- Instagram Swipe-up Links- This one is for those fortunate enoughto have amassed 10k+ followers; however, if you have, you can add a link to your Instagram stories to take your fans to a signup page.
- Lead Ads and Generation Cards– Another great way to collect subscribers is to use ads on social media platforms that allow you to collect email addresses.
Events and Networking
- In-Person Events– Get yourself out there! A very old-fashioned, yet still good way of collecting potential customers and their contact information is to go to events, such as conferences and trade shows. Local events can be especially rewarding for small businesses as not only are you getting your name known in your location, but you can also gather subscribers to your lists. If we tie this in with a method we mentioned earlier, this being – giving away something for free, we can really get places. At your booth, hold a raffle and watch everyone sign up in hopes of winning!
- Virtual Events– Hosting events such as webinars or courses can also build your email list. Once the interested person has signed up for the event using their email, you send them the link.
Customer-based Methods
- Referral Incentives– As a business, you will have already accrued x amounts of customers; well, why not ask them to help you out? Starting a referral plan in which the customer is rewarded for getting their friends to sign up to your email list or make an account on your website is a great way of finding potential customers for your campaigns. What’s even better is those customers will act as brand ambassadors, telling their friends about the products you have and their experiences with them at the same time. They are also more likely to tell friends they know they will be interested in your product; that’s killing a lot of metaphorical birds with one stone.
Step 2 – Segmenting your Email Lists
Now you have accumulated those email addresses, it’s time to separate them into groups. Different campaigns will resonate with different people. Whether they resonate depends on many different things, such as demographics, interests, whether they are a current customer or not, their past behaviours etc etc, etc. There is a fine art to the segmentation process, and it relies heavily on you taking time to define the target audience for each email campaign. If you don’t really know who you are targeting, then you won’t really know who to send the campaign to. And remember, as Web Geeks will always tell you, A/B testing is always a good option in any marketing campaign. You don’t know how well something has worked unless you have something to compare it to; A/B testing gives you that comparison; it is a very useful strategy. Let’s take a look at some methods of segmentation.
Demographics
This type of segmentation is your initial port of call, and the easiest way to separate audiences is by using simple data such as age, gender, and location. Your company may have many different products available, and it’s obvious that not everything will suit everybody. As we grow older, our tastes change. Those who are 50+ probably aren’t going to be interested in the latest sneakers, in the same way that 20-year-olds probably won’t be interested in general living aids; of course, there are always exceptions, such as those who suffer from disabilities or the world’s trendiest grandpa. However, we must aim for the majority here.
Purchase History
We see companies constantly suggest products based on past purchase history; companies such as Amazon do this with their customers every day. So why not take this idea and use it to segment a list for a campaign? It’s very easy to see the types of things people are interested in by their past purchases, especially if they have bought more than one product or service from you, so segmenting your audience by purchase history is a great way to get your campaigns off the ground.
Sales Funnel Stage
Segmenting your audience this way can be incredibly helpful. Setting up email content for the initial stage, mid-funnel, and those nearing the end of the funnel can help guide your customers along the customer journey. In the first stages of the customer journey, we need to inform potential customers about our products; we should provide educational content that allows them to learn about us and our company. As the prospects get closer to making a purchase, we need to ease up on this type of content and start giving them purchase-based information, such as product comparisons and special offers, easing them into the decision to buy one of our products.
Doing this not only helps our customers along, but helps reduce things such as unsubscribe rates and makes the customer feel understood.
Behaviour Based Segmentation
We can use behaviours other than purchase history to segment our audience. Whenever we create a campaign, we need to think about who this person is, their habits, and how they respond to things we do. We may have sent them previous marketing emails. Did they open them, or did they click on the links inside the emails? What type of approach has worked with them in the past? Are they current buyers, or have they not purchased a product from us in a while? All these things need to be considered to help tailor a campaign. A current buyer will appreciate being rewarded for their loyalty, whereas an inactive one may be enticed back with a special offer. Have you ever stopped using a service only to find months later you receive an email with a discount? Has it made you want to go back and take advantage of this special offer? Exactly! The logic is proven to work, or companies would not practise this strategy.
Step 3 -Advanced Segmentation Techniques
As we have covered the typical way in which you can segment an audience, let’s move on to how you can really fine-tune the process to make your marketing campaigns even more effective.
AI And Automation
AI can help us do a lot of things. We can use it in our marketing platforms to easily gather data about our customers and their behaviours through activity tracking. It can also identify patterns in customer behaviour or how they have engaged with our content. All of this leads to the great power of predictive analysis. With predictive analysis, we see things such as lead scoring, where the AI will predict the chances of success with different leads. However, AI can also help us with churn prediction; churn prediction is basically the likelihood that customers will leave your company or stop purchasing from you. An AI could segment those customers so you can create campaigns to retain them.
Satisfaction Index
What better way to target an email campaign than to base it on customer satisfaction? Customer satisfaction is normally measured by the satisfaction index. This metric is designed to gauge how happy customers are with your services. How do you find out how happy a customer is with your service? Well, we have to ask them, of course. Sending out requests for satisfaction information after interactions with your company can be a great help, not only to target email campaigns but to improve your processes. These are very different from reviews. Reviews are a public thing; everyone can see them. Customer satisfaction requests are just collecting data about your services from your company. They don’t need to be incredibly long; they can be as simple as asking them to provide a score between one and ten and giving them the space to leave a comment. If you do this after every big interaction with your company, you will be able to segment your audiences based on the score they are giving you. If they are particularly happy with your services, then you can send them a request for a review. They are more likely to leave a good review if they are happy with your services. Remember, not all email marketing campaigns are about direct sales.
Step 4 – Continuous optimization
Monitor and Adjust
Everything changes over time. A segmentation you created a year ago may not be full of the same type of customers that it was then. People’s lives change, and so do their purchasing habits. We must continuously monitor our customers and rearrange our lists as needed.
A/B Testing
As we have previously said, Web Geek heavily promotes A/B testing. Using this method, you can test different variables with different audiences to find out which works better. What is better than a good email marketing campaign? A finely tuned email marketing campaign.
If you are in need of a good marketing platform to help you with your email list management and email campaigns, ask us about Brand+machine. With its sophisticated contacts feature and smart list capability it can make managing your email list a breeze! Pair that with its email builder, marketing automation, and reporting capabilities; you have everything you need to keep track of your email lists and run your campaigns, all in one intuitive application.
Key Takeaways
- Email list-building works by presenting an offer in return for information.
- You can utilize your website, social media, in-person and virtual events and customer-based methods to grow your email list.
- You can segment your email lists in various ways, such as by demographics, purchase history, behaviour, and sales funnel stage, all of which have different benefits.
- AI and automation can help you easily segment your email list and provide predictive analysis to better focus your campaigns.
- You must continuously optimize your campaigns and email segmentation. Do this by reassessing your segments and then trying a/b testing.