Understanding your customer has never been more important, as there are now more platforms than ever to reach audiences. Philip Storey, Email Marketing Consultant, at eCircle, looks at how to evaluate the ‘customer need’ Vs ‘the business need’ to ensure information sent to an individual is relevant and engaging.
Email is a great relationship building tool. It’s not just a means to push out advertising. However it is vitally important that brands maximise their email campaigns, to make sure that they achieve the highest click through rate possible. To do this, you need to look at the information you are serving up to check that you are the saying the right thing at the right time to the right people.
At eCircle we regularly have clients who approach us about reviewing and implementing new email marketing campaigns and ask the same question – “How can we increase the click through rates of our email marketing campaigns?” Achieving this is essentially very simple, you have to look carefully at the information you are serving up every time you email an individual.
The key to this is evaluating the “customer need” against the “business need” of your email marketing campaign. You will find that at various stages of the customer lifecycle both of these sets of needs will complement one another; however there will also be unavoidable collisions. Identifying these is crucial. If you don’t, you run the risk of being unable to push your customers through to the next stage of the process – conversion – which may be to encourage them to buy a product or to interact with you through another channel.
Irrespective of your intended conversion, you need to understand your customers. Ask yourself – What do they want? When do they want it? Why do they want it? How can you make sure they get it? These questions may sound obvious but answering them each in turn will focus the way you communicate with them.
Brands are now competing for customers’ attention in an increasingly crowded inbox, therefore it is essential to make sure your email stands out. The rise of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter has had a major impact on how we think about click through rates, but rather than replacing email, social media can be effectively deployed, to enrich the email program and drive conversion rates. If you establish links to your other communication channels you add rich content to your emails such as reviews, images, social and video content.
Email provides us with a wealth of information about a customer’s preferences, from explicit preferences where people have said “I am interested in this category” to their online behavioural data. You’ve got to take advantage of the extra layer upon layer of information that email provides and use it to benefit your long term strategy and future email campaigns. If someone expresses interest in a particular topic or area of interest, follow up with them with a more personal email which adds value. Don’t just broadcast the same message again. Build up a strong, clear and relevant conversation. Behavioural data can be incredibly insightful, because it allows you to see exactly what content customers have clicked on within the email. However just because you have the data, it doesn’t mean you should use it, you need to carefully select and analyse the data you collect and effectively deploy it across your entire email program.
Generic messages, for example, may often be a business need and prove effective, but they are certainly not a customer need. Whilst customers may respond well to these on occasions, the most effective use of email marketing is when it is carefully tailored to the recipient.
Enhancing the design and positioning of the text and image content within your emails can also help to dramatically increase click through rates. However, this will only work, providing the content you include is relevant to the recipient. If the graphical interface is personalised, you’ll further increase your chances. The most effective tool to review the display of your email content is Eye Mapping. This allows you to analyse which aspects of the email have received the most interactions, and what hasn’t. Sometimes the same content packaged in a different way can dramatically enhance an email campaign overnight.
Ultimately knowledge is power. Knowing what people want and what is most effective is only going to help you to get more people to convert. Take advantage of this and you will see truly measurable results.
By Philip Storey
Email Marketing Consultant
eCircle
www.ecircle.com
