What, How & When of Data-Driven Emails

Meta Title: Make Your Emails More Impactful With Data-Driven Email Marketing

Meta Description: Improve the performance of your emails with data-driven email marketing. Analyze the data to define your client’s persona and generate conversions

Table of Contents

● Introduction

● What is Data-Driven Email Marketing?

● How to Get Started with Data-Driven Email Marketing?

● Strategies for Better Data-Driven Email Marketing

● Benefits of Data-Driven Email Marketing

● Conclusion

● Key Takeaways

● FAQs

Ever since the beginning of digital marketing, emails have been used to reach paying as well as potential customers. Even though many digital marketing platforms have sprouted up over the years, email remains the most cost-effective option. In fact, emails have undergone a revolution. New features have been added. They don’t just make the emails attractive but more impactful too. One such feature is that of personalization. But where did it come from? Read on to find out.

What is Data-Driven Email Marketing?

If you have ever subscribed to receive emails or newsletters from brands, you know what personalization means. Personalization is not just done in emails but also in in-app notifications. Haven’t you ever received an email that mentions your name in the subject line or addresses you right on the top? What about when you searched for a product on the internet and moments later received an email about the same? While that may seem like an invasion of privacy to some, let’s be honest, it does catch our attention.

Now, let’s look at it from a brand’s perspective. This is what data-driven marketing is all about. Numerous tools can help brands track user activity on their website or app. When you subscribe to such tools, it won’t just give you an insight into your website’s performance but will also help you target the right audience.

Analyzing data has become crucial in today’s competitive world. If you don’t do it, it’s like throwing away all your hard-earned money. For instance, if you are an e-commerce company, your analytics can tell you exactly which product or category receives the highest number of clicks. If you are drafting an email with products from that particular category, it makes sense to send it to those who browsed the category but didn’t buy.

It’ll serve as a reminder to them. It’s proven that once you keep showing the same set of products to an audience that showed interest in them, more often than not, they’ll end up liking them more than they did the first time. This will result in better conversions and a return on your investment. Data-driven email marketing is clearly the present and future of the marketing industry.

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How to Get Started with Data-Driven Email Marketing?

If you are new to the world of data-driven email marketing, this space will give you ideas on kick-starting your journey in this arena. Before you think of making strategies, make sure you have the needed armor.

1. Gather the requisite tools

Now that you’re leveling up your marketing strategy, it’s time to stock up on tool subscriptions that will give you that extra edge. From collecting user data and drafting emails to send targeted emails and analyzing the results, it is necessary to use third-party websites or apps.

Most of these tools will only provide you with a free trial, with full advanced services being available only in their paid subscription. Following is a tentative list that’ll help you get started with your journey of data-driven email marketing.

● Google Analytics to track your website traffic and user behavior with deep insights into bounce rates, engagement, and sales

● Litmus to optimize your emails using insights for an improved Return of Investment (ROI)

● Canva to create appealing emails and other marketing communication

● CleverTap to personalize, test, and deliver your emails, along with coordinating campaigns across marketing platforms

The list is endless. A wide variety of tools can help you with data-driven email marketing. The wise decision will be to take trials and see what works best for you.

2. Upskill yourself and your team

This is a given! When you are venturing into a novel area, it goes without saying that taking online classes and tutorials to upskill is crucial. In fact, one must never stop learning. With the technology improving every day, newer and better ways of marketing are available in the industry. Stay updated and ensure that your team is, too, especially with the magic of data-driven email marketing.

Strategies for Better Data-Driven Email Marketing

1. Create user personas

First step; before thinking about what communication to send to your audience, it’s necessary that you define their personas. Think of it as curating your users’ profiles by finding common interests and features.

Generally, data collection tools leave you with a tonne of information regarding your users, such as their likes and preferences, age, hobbies, profession, etc. Put this data to good use and assess it well to create personas. This will help you understand your audience and align your marketing communication better.

2. Curate an email marketing plan

Once you have defined your audience, the next step is to define your goals and draft a data-driven email marketing plan. Think about why you want to send emails to your users and what you want your users to do as a result.

E-commerce brands send emails to get their users to shop, and content creators send emails or newsletters to their audience to get more views on their content. What do you want your users to do upon reading your email? There may also be multiple goals – customer retention, onboarding, sales, etc. After that, list down the kind of content that your email should entail reaching the desired goal.

Pro-tip: Your email marketing plan should be designed in correspondence with your team’s bandwidth. There will never be enough opportunities to communicate with your users, but that doesn’t mean you should overburden your team with email requirements.

3. Create Segmented User Data

Once you have assessed the goals of your emails, the next step is to divide your users into different segments. If you don’t have multiple goals, think of your user’s journey. An e-commerce brand, for instance, will always have a set of potential users, users who have not shopped for months, users who shop regularly, and users who have not shopped for years. Divide your mailing list accordingly because you’ll need to approach each of them in different manners. In fact, there can be several segments for potential users alone, depending on their personas and likes, to be specific. These segments will always be dynamic.

4. Personalize & create targeted emails

The next crucial step in this journey is customizing emails for each segment. The number of elements that you can personalize in an email is endless. However, it’s, of course, impossible to curate a different email for each user, considering every user is unique. The smart move will be to create templates.

Each template can have a dynamic element like the name to whom the email is addressed, subject line, special offers, etc. You can also add personalized reviews and recommendations for products or services. This will make the email more relatable. After all, the magic of social proof is not new. Let fellow users do your selling for you.

5. Personalize across marketing channels

It’s time to integrate the other marketing channels with your marketing emails. Imagine yourself as a customer; if you receive both an email and an app notification from a brand about a product you just surfed the internet for, it’ll double the chances of you buying it. Sometimes you may lose the notification due to bad connectivity or just mere luck.

But, an email will come to your rescue. Plus, let’s face it, when you receive similar marketing communication from a brand on multiple channels, it makes you identify the brand better and think of it as one unit. And marketing the same thing to a customer repeatedly is a sure-shot way to make a sale.

6. Experiment

Once you start looking at data from different channels, it’ll make you want to test out different things just to assess your users’ behavior. It can be anything, from the length and language to the pictures and timings of your emails. Experimenting is a great decision. If you have the time, funds, and bandwidth to experiment with different types of emails, trust us, there is no better way to get to know your users more.

As we mentioned earlier, every user is unique. You can read as many research papers as you want, but experimenting with your own set of users will always generate fruitful insights. There will never be a shortage of information that you can get out of this.

7. Always read your data

This is the bottom line! Data is the hero element in your data-driven email marketing. It will guide you, teach you, mentor you and give you lessons for life. Marketing without reading your data is like shooting blindly.

This will result in wasted efforts, money, and opportunities. By now, we have established that there is immense importance of data in the marketing world. There are over 319.6 billion emails sent out every single day, and this figure is expected to touch 376 billion by the end of 2025, according to Statista. If you don’t analyze your data and mold your strategy accordingly, there are minuscule chances of you being able to convert your leads through emails.

8. Retargeting is Key

Retargeted ads and emails are a great way to convert the audience that you almost got to pay. These users were already interested in your product but didn’t end up paying for some reason. Through the power of data-driven email marketing, you can understand the probable reason for the last-minute change in their plans.

Therefore, you must create a separate segment for these mailers and get your customers to think once again about buying. Retargeted ads and mailers have a lot of potentials to convert customers for you.

Benefits of Data-Driven Email Marketing

1. Improved Return of Investment (ROI)

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When you start indulging in data-driven email marketing, you’ll realize that personalized emails work better than general ones. It’s natural! If you receive a piece of tailor-made content for you, you ought to relate more to it. This is true for other marketing channels as well. Customers will always take more interest in personalized marketing communication. Therefore, data-driven email marketing will automatically give you a better ROI. To top it off, emails have always been a channel that drives better ROI than other modes of marketing.

2. Better user experience

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Every user wants to be valued. They don’t want to be treated as just another client. That’s why service is of utmost importance in a store. The way you treat your customers is crucial in deciding whether they will return. In the digital world, this is solved by personalization.

Personalized emails make your clients feel that you know them, think for them, and curate especially for them. This will make all the difference in how they think about your brand. After all, it’s not just your product that matters, but the experience that your client had while shopping from you is also essential.

Data-driven marketing emails help you garner more users and retain the existing ones. It aids in your attempt to understand your audience and improve their experience of being a member of your brand family.

When you start doing data-driven marketing, you’ll see the difference in your campaign’s performance. You’ll observe more clicks, greater conversions, a stronger user experience, and an increase in the overall revenue generated. The key to a successful email marketing campaign is to take the tips above, strategize accordingly, and implement them immediately.

Key Takeaways

● Data-driven email marketing is an impactful way of generating new users and staying engaged with the existing users of your brand.

● Get the necessary tools and start assessing your data to create segmented mailing lists for your brand.

● Once that is accomplished, send out personalized emails and other marketing communication. Link them together for a holistic user experience.

● Get ready to see a magical improvement in your brand’s marketing performance. You’ll see a stark change in the ROI and conversions.

● Remember that this is a dynamic process, and it’s crucial for you and your team members to stay updated.

FAQs