How do you write the perfect group email?

Most businesses have wholeheartedly embraced email marketing and the opportunities it presents to extend customer loyalty, increase brand awareness and reach out to new potential customers. However, not every firm is achieving the results they could with an email marketing strategy and many would achieve greater success by paying attention to an important theme: personalisation.

Email marketing is a popular and cost-effective sales strategy and can strengthen the relationship your business enjoys with its customers. But customers are all different and they all have different reasons for wanting or needing your product or service. Clever email marketing embraces these differences and personalises communication so that it resonates with different groups of customers and delivers more effective end results.

Writing a blanket email to 4,000 customers will have little impact. Similarly, no business has the time or resources to write 4,000 individual emails. What is the solution? Segmented email marketing which targets groups of customers according to tastes, trends, buying habits and demographics. Segmentation is an important marketing process for any business and lends itself perfectly to email marketing because it allows you to tailor your approach into smaller, focused lists instead of large advertising campaigns which provide more limited scope for differentiation.

Segmented email marketing has a much higher open and click rate. This means more people are likely to open and respond to an email campaign than if a blanket marketing message had been sent across an entire customer base. One of the hardest skills to master in email marketing is devising an appropriate subject line which appeals to a customer and encourages them to click the email open and read. It’s all about relevance and a personalised subject line is critical to ensuring your chosen message reaches your target audience. How many times have you received a marketing email only to instantly switch off when the subject line refers to something that doesn’t affect you such as a student discount offer when you’re in full time professional employment or a discounted mobile phone contract when you’ve just tied yourself in to a two-year deal? With no relevance there’s no sale and the marketing strategy fails. However, is can be equally harmful to be over-familiar with the recipient of your emails. Awareness of identity fraud is much higher than it has been in the past and consumers are distrustful of communication that addresses them by name especially if it is overly used throughout the copy of the email. It’s much better to have personalisation that appeals to a subscriber’s individuality or previous buying habits is far more acceptable approach and achieves a greater response rate. Again, this is to do with relevance and directing the recipient’s attention to goods or services that they’ve previously shown an interest in.

In conclusion, blanket messages with the same standardised content and key messages are not nearly as effective as targeting communication to specific groups which share similar characteristics. We need to cater for all our customers’ needs and respond to their individual problems to gain the kind of loyalty we need.

If you found this article of interest then feel free to share below. Also you can receive our updates direct into your inbox by clicking here and completing your details.