|
![]() ![]() ![]()
Expert Answers to Biz Questions Listen in! Pick up some expert advice to a reader's question that we selected from CyberSchmooz.
A Personal Touch: Improving Your Email Marketing Campaigns
Companies have been personalizing their email marketing campaigns for years, but there’s recently been much discussion of the process as experts pose the question, can there be too much of a good thing?
Great personalization creates a bond between brands and their consumers, but not all companies understand how to play the game and risking personalization can have serious fallout. Poorly executed personalization campaigns, for example, can drive away business and when companies acquire too much information, they risk security breaches and may be perceived as “creepy” by the customers. The key is to keep your company on the side of creative connection, not excessive involvement.
Psychological Insights
The first step to better email marketing is to understand the psychology behind the buying process. Color, for example, plays a significant subconscious role in how customers perceive your brand. Unfortunately, despite prominent messaging to the contrary, most colors don’t have a set association. Rather, color meanings are influenced by personal experience, as well as the appropriateness of a color’s match between preexisting brand identities. For brands, then, it’s important to understand your company’s personality before you try to choose a color for marketing materials.
Navigating Narrative
Another part of developing effective marketing materials is creating a meaningful narrative that customers can connect to. Your emails should tell a story. The question that marketing experts are asking, though, is how specific should that story be?
Businesses should carefully consider how closely marketing narratives hew to the recipient’s life due to concerns about excessive oversight. Can you send an email recommending anniversary presents based on data from a wedding registry? What about birthday emails? It’s important for your company to put forth your story and then draw in connections, not try to tell customers about themselves.
Leverage the Obvious
The best facts to leverage when creating personalized marketing emails are those that customers give you directly, not those driven by artificial intelligence or other forms of data. Birthdays, as mentioned above, are a great example of this and they’ve become the gold standard in marketing. Almost every website registration asks for a birth date that can be used to send out discounts or specialty products, whether it's a free drink at Starbucks or a timely email promoting birthstone jewelry.
Other obvious traits that companies use in their marketing emails are brand VIP status, gendered listings, and membership anniversaries, all of which are non-invasive ways to offer customers recognition. These tactics help customers feel seen but they’re also easy to automate on your end.
Just because data allows you to know more about your customers doesn’t mean you have to demonstrate it in marketing emails. Rather, sticking to the tried and true methods marketers have been using for years, such as developing a color story and brand narrative and building basic connections with customers, is often for the best. Smart targeting is compelling but overly detailed observations are creepy. Buyers already know companies are watching them closely. They don’t need you to demonstrate it every time you send out an email.
![]() Small Business Tax Center • Idea Cafe Home • Sign Up • Biz Grant Center • CyberSchmooz •Coffee Talk with Experts • People in Biz Profiles • Starting Your Biz • Biz Planning • Running Your Biz • FREE Trade Publications • Marketing • Financing Your Biz • Human Resources • Legal & Biz Forms • Managing Your Biz • eCommerce • You and Your Biz • Gen X • Work@Home • The Fridge • De-Stress • Send an Award • Send an eGreeting • Yoga @ Your Desk • Web Guide • Idea Cafe in the News • About Idea Cafe • Advertise on Idea Cafe • Contact Us • Privacy Policy • Site Map • Small Biz News
Copyright 1995-2023, Idea Cafe Inc. Downloads are for personal use only, not for resale to others, and may not be reprinted in any form without written permission from Idea Cafe Inc.
DISCLAIMER: We hope whatever you find on this site is helpful, but be cautioned that it may not apply to your own situation, or be totally current at any given time. Idea Cafe Inc. and all of its current and past experts, sponsors, advertisers, agents, contractors and advisors disclaim all warranties with regard to anything found anywhere on this family of websites, quoted from, or sent from Idea Cafe. and its related sites, publications and companies. We also take no responsibility for comments published by others on these pages. TRADEMARKS: The following are Registered Trademarks or Servicemarks of DevStart, Inc.: Idea Cafe®, Online Coffee Break®, The Small Business Gathering Place®, Take out Info®, Biz Bar & Grill®, Complaint-O-Meter®, A Fun Approach to Serious Business, CyberSchmooz, and BizCafe.
|
|