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Segment your
Subscribers, Personalize and Target --
Effective email marketing is more complex then
simply sending an email message to your entire
list. The effectiveness can be increased
dramatically by targeting subsets of
subscribers, personalizing the email message and
performing follow-up marketing.
Segment
By offering
multiple newsletter topics and allowing
subscribers to choose their topics of interest,
you will increase the effectiveness of your
campaigns. If you keep sending messages
that are not of interest to your subscribers
they will be more likely to ignore all the
messages. Send them only the ones they
want.
For example,
suppose you are a national web site selling
concert tickets. You might offer targeted
email lists for country, rock, hip-hop, blues,
jazz, rap, folk, dance, tribal, etc music types.
Personalize
Studies have shown
that the greater number of personalization
elements to an email, the higher the response
rates. At minimum of course, personalization can
mean addressing a recipient by their first name.
Ultimately, however, true personalization means
delivering emails that are tailored to the
specific profile and preferences of each
recipient.
Target
If you collect
information beyond the basic name and email
address fields, why not use it? If you
aren't currently collecting extra demographic
information now would be a great time to start.
For example,
suppose you are a national web site selling
concert tickets. Vital demographics you
should collect include the age of your
subscribers, sex, music preferences (country,
rock, hip-hop, blues, jazz, rap, folk, dance,
tribal, etc), state, city, etc. Now, if
Dolly Parton is singing in Dallas, Texas, you
can send a targeted solicitation to all who are
interested in Country music in the state of
Texas. You might send a more generic
message to state residents and a more localized
message to Dallas residents.
Send
Follow-Up Information
A common
technique in email marketing is to send a
follow-up message based on specific actions.
For example, you might send a follow-up email to
all who clicked a specific link in an email.
You might do the same based on those who clicked
a specific link in the message. Or, you
might follow up to those who never opened the
message. Keep in mind that open rates are
not effectively measured as Microsoft Outlook
2003 blocks such tracking pixels.
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