Email Marketing Best Practices
Starting with a Clean Database
One way of ensuring that Email marketing is done correctly and efficiently is to maintain the database associated with the company’s customers. Our current database is made up of subscribers that were grouped together and listed by our previous digital marketing manager. In order to ensure that our database is made up of subscribers that will play a role in our target audience they must first be segmented into proper groups to determine the type of audience the belong to and how best to market to each group (Dodson, 2016). These segments consist of groups determined by demographics, geography, history, relationship, customer lifecycle, and dynamic segmentation which is a segmentation based on the customers history and lifecycle (Dodson, 2016). The first thing that should be done is to determine the target audience and which of these subscribers fit into that target audience that way they can be removed from the target list and perhaps used in a different area. A primary example of this is a target audience that consists of female subscribers in the age range of 25-30 with a lifecycle of 2-5 years. Any subscriber that does not fit into the target audience should not be in the database. With a bounce rate of 50% with the email subscriptions the company needs to see which emails are going unread or opened and remove those users from the subscription list. By removing them, the company will make way for different subscribers that will be a benefit to the company instead of costing the company money.
Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing is one of the strongest sources of promotion today and helps build a relationship with customers (Camelia, 2016). Cameron states that “The question is how to address effectively and efficiently customers belonging to different cultural backgrounds, looking for light-speed transactions, and respecting their privacy needs, while gathering valuable information and trying to keep in touch” (Cameron, 2010). The first thing that should be addressed with any marketing campaign is how to strengthen the relationship between the company and the customers. One thing that will help strengthen the relationship between the company and consumers and that will also help our campaign is the personalization or customization of emails that are sent out to our customers (Camelia, 2016). By customizing the emails, the company sends out to consumers, we show our customers how special they are to the company and how much we appreciate their business. This can be done by offering special deals just to those select customers due to their longevity with the company or even the amount of money they have spent on the website with their most recent purchase. With our 40% open rate the other 60% are not opening and reading their mail. This is where the customization plays key role. By letting this 60% know how important they are to the business by offering a special promotion this again helps the company improve our open rate, recognize our current customers and build upon the relationship we have with our consumers.
Email Reminder Plan
One of the ways of reminder our customers that they have services available from the company via email. This can be done instore or online. Having customers made aware of promotions that are available via email at time of check out is just another way of letting them know all the services our company offer. These types of promotions not only bring awareness to our company’s services but also demonstrate our company’s drive to recognize our customers and show them how much they are appreciated by the business. With this type of awareness we remind our customers of their options with the company but we also strengthen the relationship with our subscribers.
References
Carmen, P., & Nicolae, P. A. (2010). EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS: THE EASIEST PATH FROM ORGANIZATIONS TO CONSUMERS — AN EXPLORATORY ASSESSMENT. Annals Of The University Of Oradea, Economic Science Series, 19(1), 737-742.
Camelia, B. (2016). Theoretical Approaches on Successful Email Marketing Campaigns. Ovidius University Annals: Economic Sciences Series, Vol XVI, Iss 2, Pp 306-311 (2016), (2), 306.
Dodson, I. (2016). The Art of Digital Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Creating Strategic, Targeted, and Measurable Online Campaigns, 1st Edition. [Purdue University Global Bookshelf]
