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One factor influences the success of every single email marketing campaign I have seen, and that is the database of people you are going to communicate with. The quality and cleanliness of your customer and prospect database affects the chances of getting your message delivered; the depth of information held on recipients determines how relevant and targeted you can make your email communications; and how up to date the information is kept influences your ability to deliver relevant messages on an ongoing basis. How you collect and maintain your database will be a key factor in the success your email marketing activities achieve – so what is the best way of doing it?
Start with a strategy. Data Collection should start with a strategy and be based around the simple question of 'What is it that my recipients will want to receive from me?' Armed with the answers you can then decide what questions you need to ask them to be able to provide the information they want. Remember that recipients view data collection as a transactional process, the more data they give away, the more they will want in return. For example, very few people are prepared to spend 15 minutes of their lives completing a form just to sign up for an email newsletter from a car insurance company. They might however be prepared to spend 15 minutes giving data if it is going to get them the cheapest car insurance quote on the internet. In essence we need to consider the value of our proposition to the customer to decide how much data we can collect.
Relevancy runs throughout email marketing and this is also the case with data collection - make sure that all of the questions you ask are relevant to both you and the recipient. If you are not going to use the information to make your communication to that recipient more relevant then don’t ask the question.
Once you have collected recipient’s details and added them to your database you can then begin to really learn about your recipient, what they are interested in and what makes them tick. Every time you send an email you can learn a little bit more about your audience – there are two ways to do this.
Firstly look at the behavioural information you are collecting from your email activity. Every email they open gives you a little bit more data on what they are interested in, the subject line they responded to, the time of day they are opening your message and the specific links they are clicking on. Conversely none action can be just as important, which emails are they not opening, which links are they ignoring and what subject lines are tuning them out. All of this vital behavioural information can be stored and utilised to make your email more relevant next time.
Secondly, don’t be afraid to ask more questions as you build your relationship with your recipients. Simple polls or single questions within an email can enable you to build an increasingly detailed profile of a recipient. The more you know about your customers and prospects, the more relevant you can make your communications to them and as all good email marketers know, the more relevant your email is, the greater the chance of recipient interaction and ultimately purchase.
As you build your email relationships you will need to constantly manage and cleanse your database. We all change over time, people who signed up 12 months ago may no longer be interested in your product or service, make sure you help these people to unsubscribe – failure to do so will only lead to them complaining about your messages which will ultimately affect the delivery of your email to those people who do want to receive it.
Consider peoples position within the customer lifecycle. To do this you will invariably need to ensure all of your data sources are communicating effectively and that your email database has the latest information from your CRM or other data sets.
Data drives your email activity, take the time to assess your data collection and management processes and remember:
- Data collection is a transactional process – is the value of providing the data clear to the recipient
- Use it or lose it – only ask for information that is relevant to the recipient
- Collect data continuously – every time you send an email you can learn a little bit more
- Clean and maintain – if people aren’t interacting find out why and if they still don’t interact remove them
All the time invested in collecting and managing data enables you to understand your customer and prospects better which will have a direct impact on your ability to sell and maintain relationships with them.
James Bunting
Head of Client Services
Communicator Corp |
