A few days ago, I was reading a blog where the term “email blast” was used – without irony! I’ve heard the expression many times in my career and shudder each time. To me a blast recalls an uncoordinated explosion – or to quote one dictionary, “a mass of hot air that moves quickly and forcefully”. Well that may be an apt description of some email campaigns, but it shouldn’t be that way by design. Our email marketing strategies need to evolve.
Your email campaigns should be a lot more than a random attack on an unsuspecting contact list, at least if you want to produce great results. Your target audience will have a more engaging experience if emails aren’t just “blasted” at them.
Segmenting the contact list and customizing the message is a step away from the blast mentality – but in many cases segmentation is by job title or industry vertical and that can be too general to deliver meaningful segmentation. A better approach is to segment by relevancy!
A client of mine runs a professional services agency. He generates most of his leads through inbound marketing. As a thought leader in the field, he generates interest in his services through the white papers he writes and publishes. Once the content piece is ready to go, he publicizes it through blog-posts, social media and email – directing people to a landing page where they are required to provide contact information before receiving the white paper. It’s all standard content-marketing stuff. Effectiveness is measured by the number of people that willingly share contact information in order to receive the white paper.
When sending emails to a single list that contains all contacts, landing-page conversions are in the range of 15%-23%, which means that less than one quarter of those who arrive at the landing page actually complete the form.
But, when the contact list is broken down into smaller groups with each group segmented by relevancy, and with email messages customized for each segment, conversion rates increase significantly. In the segmented campaigns, landing page conversion rates of 65% and more are not uncommon. That’s a big jump from 23%. Bear in mind, the landing page and contact form remain unchanged. The improvement in conversion rates result from list segmentation by relevancy and by customizing email messages. It’s more work than the traditional email “blast” – but look at the dividends!
Removing “blast” from our email lexicon is a step towards eliminating the “blast” mentality. Understanding what’s relevant to your readers and building content accordingly will lead to better results and improve the experience of your target audience. Learn more about segmenting lists and building relevant messages by clicking here!
