Did you know that 40% of all e-commerce revenue comes from a mere 8% of repeat customers? That’s almost half of all revenue coming less than 10% of new customers. A figure like that really shakes the pillars of marketing to its core.
What should abundantly clear from these findings is that the secret to increased ROI is effective customer engagement and retention. The question then becomes which channels you use to reach these customers and build valuable relationships that lead to repeat business.
Email marketing is certainly one effective tactic, if for no other reason than the eyebrow-raising statistic that effective email marketing results in an average ROI of 3,800%. And no, that wasn’t a typo.
What most marketers are aware of is that personalization is another key to doing email marketing right. So now we look at some prime examples of email marketing and personalization strategies that you can use today to help inform your email strategy.
Give your subscribers the content they crave
Source: Superoffice
SuperOffice is a European supplier of CRM solutions. They’ve done well for themselves for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because they have a solid personalized email strategy in place. Not only do they send emails that refer to the recipient by their full name, but they also give them what they crave. And in this B2B world that’s content—specifically, white papers and ebooks. In fact, according to findings from DemandGen, 82% of B2B buyers rely heavily on content that offers data and analysis, like white papers and ebooks. And SuperOffice makes sure to give it to them every time.
Utilize video
Brian Dean is the founder of Backlinko, an SEO and link-building company. Most of his email strategy revolves around video these days. He’s already built a rapport with subscribers on Backlinko’s email list, and adding video content is just one more way to keep them engaged. You can take this strategy and personalize helpful videos around your target audience. Look at what problems they face in their business and see if you can find a video to send out that helps them solve that problem.
Source: Backlinko
Another effective way to do this is taking a piece of content that got a good response when you sent it out to your subscribers and make a video of it. Evergreen content is always good, and if
you can recreate it in a different and engaging medium like video, then all the better.
Appeal to inactive subscribers
Perfect Audience is a web/mobile/social retargeting company that pride themselves on their software solution to help companies get more sales. Their implicit sales pitch is that they know how to appeal to audiences. Therefore, you’d expect them to be able to keep their own house in order where it concerns connecting with their target base through email marketing. And they do, because they know one important secret where it concerns inactive subscribers.
First, inactive subscribers are a problem that plagues the email efforts of many companies. In fact, stats from 2015 suggest that 39% of email lists were inactive. But there’s a silver lining to this cloud: the same report also states that inactive subscribers are still profitable—many of these folks still make purchases even if they aren’t opening emails. To put a number on it, inactive subscribers are worth about 32% of actives.
So how did Perfect Audience go about addressing their inactives? They created a list of inactive email subscribers (those who hadn’t opened an email in a year or who hadn’t engaged with their service in 60-90 days) and then sent re-engagement emails.
Source: Perfect Audience
Regarding your efforts, these should always be messages that remind inactives who you are and what you do, and, most importantly, why they signed up in the first place. Remind them of the value you offer, and segment the data so you can offer personalized email messages. Maybe suggest special offers based on their activity on various channels, or make recommendations based on the user’s life stage.
Invite subscribers to webinars
Webinars are another great way to engage with wide audiences at one time. That’s why Kissmetrics, that giant of digital marketing, has gone all in on webinars. Kissmetrics’ found Neil Patel always seems to have some cool new webinar going on with enticing topics like “Get more visitors and sales.” But if you do want to go down the webinar route than you should do like Kissmetrics and put together an attractive email template that hooks the reader with a topic that states how it can benefit their business.
Source: Kissmetrics
Moreover, you needn’t go searching for topics. Instead, you can personalize these topics according to content you’ve sent that’s performed well in the past. Maybe you had a blog post that spoke directly to certain email subscribers. Simply take that topic and turn it into a webinar. What appealed to those email recipients initially will likely still appeal to them in webinar form.
Conclusion
These are just a few examples of companies that used email strategy and personalization to appeal more to their audience. There are other personalization tips, like building customer personas, setting up behavioral trigger emails, and making sure to match personalized emails with landing pages specific to the target’s interest. And all strategies mentioned here are foolproof ways to increase click-through and conversion rates.
Author Bio: Ryan Gould –Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Services Elevation Marketing
From legacy Fortune 100 institutions to inventive start-ups, Ryan brings extensive experience with a wide range of B2B clients. He skillfully architects and manages the delivery of integrated marketing programs, and believes strongly in strategy, not just tactics, that effectively aligns sales and marketing teams within organizations.
Ryan is known for taking complex marketing and business challenges and developing solutions that simplify processes while driving customer outcomes and business value. He also thrives on guiding Elevation teams toward execution of strategies that help companies succeed in new verticals, while staying true to core values and brand integrity.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rygould/