Two years back, the
idea that social media would hasten the death of email marketing was
hotly debated in blogs and op-eds throughout the digital marketing community.
And while I don’t see it often anymore, I will occasionally stumble upon a blog
that states, “Yes, email marketing is very much alive and well.”
Need proof?
According to a recent survey published on MarketingProfs, email holds more
sway in the purchasing process than personal referrals, company social media
and blogs, direct mail and more. Email even ranked second (19 percent) among
young consumers (those aged 20-30) behind company websites as the preferred way
to engage with a brand.
The validating
statistics are moot, however, if you’re not aggressively working to improve
your email marketing list. Here, I share three easy ways you can get more
from your email marketing database.
APPEND
In February, the
United States Postal Service (USPS) announced it will stop delivering first
class mail on Saturdays starting this August. Possible ramifications jarred
many multichannel marketers enough to begin investigating options to amplify
their email efforts.
Email append is a
good solution for finding the email addresses of customers on your current
postal list. Email append works like this:
- Email marketers provide the names and
postal addresses of the consumers they want to find addresses for to an
email append service provider.
- The provider uses algorithms to match
the list to databases of opt-in email addresses, names and postal
addresses.
- The provider sends a permission request
to each matched email address, giving the customer the opportunity to opt
into email communications.
- The provider adds approved email
addresses to the customer files, which it returns to the email marketer.
CLEAN
Having too many
bounces, complaints or spam trap hits damages your email reputation, which
means your messages could be sent to the junk folder or, worse, blocked.
Silverpop provided a snapshot of how industry bounce rates and spam complaint
rates compare in its “2013 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study.”
Performing a simple
data check to correct misspellings and typos entered during the acquisition
phase is one step toward cleaning your list, thereby improving deliverability,
says Pamela Vaughan, director of brand strategy for Lititz. Cleaning yourlist enables you to correct simple syntax and misspelling errors, and it allows
you to remove distribution email addresses, like sales@company.com.
ENHANCE
Personalization is a
common email marketing strategy nowadays, but gathering enough data about your
customers to make emails personalized can prove tricky. Whenever I’m filling
out a form (whether online or on paper), I never enter personal information into
the boxes without those pesky “required” asterisks. (Hey, you want my phone
number? You’re going to have to work harder than that!) I bet you’re of the
same mind.
So how do you gather
that data without scaring customers away? Data enhancement. By sending your
email list to a data enhancement provider, you can discover demographics
(including name, mailing address, age and income), psychographics, buying
behavior, lifestyle data and business information, making your personalization
efforts a breeze! Learn more about personalization by downloading our free
ebook, “Personalized Content: Generate More Revenue with a Dynamic Web
Experience.”
Article From: www.kunocreative.com
