Ever wonder how to build and effective email marketing strategy? What does an email marketing strategy look like? There are three main take aways for having a Contact Management and Segmentation Strategy
- Have a clean and organized database
- Collect the right information
- Understanding your data
Having a clean and organized database is key to a good contact management foundation. You want your data to work for you and not against you. A contact is anybody that your company may come in contact with doing business. This includes subscribers, lead and potential clients but also can include vendors, contractors, partners and competitors.
Each contact will have associated contact properties. Contact can be associated with companies and companies will have their own properties. There are many different ways that we collect user data: chat bots, emails, web forms. When these contacts are added to our contact database we can segment them in to their specific user persona.
What does a segmentation strategy look like?
Every business should have segments for subscribers, leads, and customers. These segments align where our potential customers are in the lifecycle stage. We should be able to monitor the health of our database with a few key metrics: contacts that have unsubscribed, contacts with bounced emails, and contacts that haven’t opened an email in the past year. Segments are what keep an email marketing strategy organized and sustainable for years to come, helping your business grow.
Sending the Right Email
When you send the right email you have a better chance of converting your leads into customers. This helps develop the relationship and builds trust. Two important things to consider when sending an email:
- Why you’re sending the email
- The value you’re delivering to the customer
Are you sending the right email, to the right person, at the right time? These are three components to sending the right email. You need to provide valuable content and deliver it at a time that will be most impactful. Make sure you are catering to the human on the other side of the email and be as personable as possible. Think about the last time you got an email and wondered why you ever received it? Sending the right email at the right time is a way to develop trust.
Your contacts will change lifecycle stages; some leads will become customers. Be sure to update your contacts persona as they progress through your lifecycle stages. You wouldn’t want to send a customer an email to sign up for your services they already have! Knowing when not to send an email is as important as sending the right email. Remember to be human and helpful.
High performance emails focus on the components of an email and optimizing them to drive your contacts towards a specific goal. Selecting the right goal and optimizing each component of the email to reach that goal will create high performing emails.