Why Targeted Email Marketing Gets Results

There’s no contending the power of email marketing. For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in revenue. That’s a 3,800% ROI – a statistic that social media simply can’t touch.

But today’s business owners are inundated with email, and it can be difficult to get their attention. We’re not talking about a catchy subject line or attractive offer (although those are essential ingredients); we’re talking about email targeting to ensure you’re getting the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

It’s a complex science to be sure, but taking the time to develop targeted email campaigns can jumpstart your marketing, get your brand in front of new prospects, and ultimately grow your revenue.

Here’s how.

Step #1 – Segment Your Database

The idea is simple: your prospects are not all created equally. Therefore, your messaging should not all be the same. Segmenting your database allows you to send personalized content to groups of contacts based on certain traits.

How should you segment your lists? It depends on your goals, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• By industry. This is a smart place to start when you don’t have a ton of details about your prospects. By segmenting your lists based on industry, you can focus on how your product or service offers a specific solution within the industry you’re targeting.
• By persona. In today’s B2B buying and selling sphere, it can take as many as 4 people to make a buying decision – more for enterprise organizations. Gone are the days when your top sales person takes the CEO to dinner and closes a deal over martinis. Now, you’ve got to get buy-in from multiple people within your target accounts. Everyday users, while not capable of making buying decisions, can have significant influence over those who are.
• By stage of sales cycle. This is where MA is incredibly useful. By creating automated email campaigns that are sent based on trigger events – when a prospect does something significant like clicks a link, completes a form, or requests information or a quote – you can track exactly where each contact is in your sales cycle.

Step #2 – Create Relevant Content

If you’re emailing a business that manufacturers canned cat food, they don’t care about plastic beverage bottles; but they may be interested in your vacuum packed plastic food pouches…

The everyday user for your software doesn’t care about deals on additional seats; but the CFO sees an opportunity to renew and improve the company’s bottom line…

And a qualified lead who you have nurtured through the email process does not want to receive an introductory email about your offerings; save that for the brand new prospect that just joined your list…

See the trend?

There is no one-size-fits-all content when it comes to email marketing. Companies that “spray and pray” generic messages to their entire database will quickly see their unsubscribe rates soar and their lists diminish.

Step #3 – Embrace Automation

While you may be reading along nodding your head at the commonsense of this all, when it comes down to execution, things can get a little tricky. You cannot realistically give every prospect in your database the one-on-one attention needed to nurture them through the sales cycle with timely, relevant emails. With marketing automation solutions, however, you can create automated workflows and repeating email campaigns that send the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

And if the ease of it isn’t enough to convince you, studies have found that brands using marketing automation generate twice as many leads as those that use “email blast” software.

Targeted Emails Are Not Spammy

This is an important note to end on. While generic email blasts are more likely to get caught in the spam filter, marked as spam, or even unsubscribed from, targeted emails have a far greater chance of making it through and being viewed.

Email clients use highly technical algorithms to detect spam, and while the language and format of your email play a big role, so does the behaviors of your recipient. If your emails never get opened, they will eventually be deemed spam. If, however, you are sending relevant information to prospects and moving them through your funnel with the occasional open and click-through, you will appear a credible brand with proper intentions.

Need Help With Targeted Email Marketing?

It’s what we do at EmoryDay! Contact us today and see how we can jumpstart your email marketing or ensure you hit the ground running with a new strategy.

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