Targeted Email Marketing – Reach the Right People, with the Right Message
Email marketing is a great way for businesses to communicate with customers or leads to share updates, promote new products and more. The end goal of this type of marketing, of course, is to reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time, for maximum conversions. That’s where personalization through targeted email marketing can really help.
👀 Want to step up your email marketing strategy? Keep reading! In this article, we provide a quick overview on targeted email marketing and the best tips on how to set it up.
Targeted email marketing is the practice of sending customized and relevant messages to a pre-defined group of individuals within your email list.
By segmenting your email list and tailoring your messaging to each segment, the goal is to deliver a more personalized and engaging experience for your customers.
Segmentation (the process of dividing your email list in smaller segments) can be based on things such as:
demographics (age, location) 👉 Example: based on geographical location, a clothing brand can send customers based in California some swimwear options vs. some hiking options for Colorado-based customers;
interests and behaviors 👉 Example: based on past purchase history, a customer who usually buys products from a certain brand on a platform would receive emails about new products offering from this specific brand.
💡 With targeted marketing, possibilities are endless! The more your emails are tailored to the needs of a particular segment, the most likely they are to be engaged, and ultimately, to buy more from you.
The benefits of targeted email marketing
Increased open, click-through and conversion rates
It makes sense: if you deliver personalized messages to specific groups of people, you increase their interest, and therefore your chances of:
customers opening the email (open rate);
customers clicking on a button on the email (click-through rate);
customers actually performing the action you wanted them to do from the start, i.e. using a discount on your site (conversion rate).
Increased customer loyalty
As a client, have you ever received emails from a company that were irrelevant? What did you think? You probably felt slightly annoyed by opening and reading some content that is of no interest to you, and your perception of the brand itself maybe changed.
💡 Personalized emails help to provide a more positive overall customer experience, which make your customers stay!
Cost-effectiveness
By defining smaller segments, you avoid wasting time and money by sending irrelevant (and useless!) emails. Plus, in general, email marketing is a cost-effective way to reach your audience compared to other marketing channels.
🔍 Want to learn more about other marketing activities? Check out our guides!
Here are the main steps you need to take for setting up your targeted email campaign:
Identify your target audience: What are the demographics, interests, behaviors of the people you want to reach? 🚀 You can use some customer segmentation tools.
Craft personalized messages: What content (promotions, recommendations, new products) could be interested to the target? What kinda of subject line would best grab their attention? 🚀 Use A/B testing tools for testing and picking the best copy!
Comply with the law: Do you have a privacy policy in which you inform clients their personal data (i.e. email address) will be used for contacting them? Did you obtain consent for doing so? Do you provide a means to withdraw consent (opt-out) and unsubscribe? Do you keep consent records? 🚀 All-in-one tools like iubenda can help with the legal aspect.
Use email automation: What email workflows do you need to set up? Based on what actions? Email workflows can help you manage a series of triggered emails that can be sent automatically depending on specific actions taken by a segment of customers (i.e. potential clients who leave items in their online shopping cart) 🚀 Use tools like HubSpot, Sendinblue, Mailchimp or Drip for your automation!
Track and analyze results: How are your campaigns performing? What are the open, click-through, conversion and unsubscribe rates? 🚀 Email marketing tools usually give you an overview of these metrics.
💡 Did you make this one mistake when setting up your email marketing campaign? Find out here!
👋 Is your email marketing campaign compliant with the law?
We get it, it’s complicated. But this is a crucial step in implementing your targeted email strategy. Some privacy laws like the GDPR most likely apply to you. Before sending emails to people, you need to:
in most cases, obtain prior consent via an affirmative action (no pre-checked boxes): see where and when you can legally send emails without obtaining prior consent in this guide;
inform the recipient: email addresses are considered personal data. You need to mention what you do with this data, why, if it is shared (and more!), in your privacy policy. Provide a means to unsubscribe;
under the GDPR, keep valid records of consent: they must include the person’s identity, the time, disclosures, methods of the consent obtained.
Use an all-in-one tool for doing all of the above ⬇️
Make your targeted email campaigns compliant with the law
Create your privacy policy, collect consent and keep records
