We keep seeing the same metric year after year: for every $1 spent in email marketing, $43 is generated on average in ROI. But what we don’t hear equally enough is how personalization can drive up to 6x that number, and only 30% of brands are currently adopting automation via machine learning to help them get there.
There’s a laundry list of reasons why: internal resources, lack of advanced data practices, existing solutions are too expensive, what is the right Email Service Provider (ESP) for my business objective, how do we tailor creative strategy to speak directly to one customer, when should we tweak elements within our emails to help drive incremental sales, the list goes on.
The end result is 95% of all email volume is going to mass promotional sends that contribute little to no revenue, while only 5% are going to automated triggers that contribute most of all email revenue.
Email is Dead?
We keep hearing this year after year too, but what do the numbers say? According to E-Consultancy’s Industry Census, email continues to drive the highest ROI among all businesses surveyed:
- Email Marketing 73%
- SEO 67%
- Content Marketing 62%
- PPC 59%
- Affiliate Marketing 47%
So, with the holidays approaching, what’s the next step?
Get Personal
There are numerous automated (or triggered) emails your business should be implementing:
- Welcome – the foundational journey to nurturing customers and building Lifetime Value
- Confirmation – also a nurturing event that some brands overlook, but equally important to helping build relationships with new customers
- Browse Abandon – people get distracted, and life gets busy. Reminding users to come back to specific product pages after dropping off your site/app is still the largest conversion driver among any out there.
- Cart Abandon – offering unique incentives for users to buy I.E. price discounts, free shipping, etc. Hint: countdown clocks work.
- Unsubscribe – your customers want to leave. Would you miss them? Shouldn’t you tell them? And if they must, what can they tell you about their experience that you can use to help reduce future churn, tailor new customer experiences, and help build LTV?
- Signed up, but not active – when potential customers don’t take the first step, help them.
- Undefined – automation offers endless possibilities to quickly and easily send new triggers. What new campaigns can your business design to help drive sales, increase adoption, turn customers into your brand advocates, and increase lifetime value?
Data as Foundation
Even with the most tailored messaging, and the most advanced toolkit, no email campaign can take full advantage of personalization without the right Data strategy at its core. Hint: it starts well before the purchase, and lies within the UX of your website/app.
On your signup form, what criteria is your business asking for? Just first name, last name, and email address? Think about the lifecycle of your current customers, and how that informs your approach to data decisions. What additional inputs would aid in helping build more effective re-engagement strategies to nurture customers and drive incremental sales?
Then there are the considerations within the logic itself: how can your business use AI to gain a deep understanding of core audiences? What behavioral signals within your existing database should you use to build and test those audiences? How long should users stay dormant before it’s best to re-engage? When is the typical repurchase cycle and how do we effectively split test drips to incentivize repurchase? What custom decision trees can you create to help increase average order value? What was the last interaction type and at what frequency should we communicate?
Machine learning and predictive algorithms offer a leap forward in helping determine business rules, such as segmenting and targeting lists based on prior sends, opens, user geography, product type, content type, revenue, AOV, device type, heat mapping, an endless combination of possibilities to help you tailor your data logic.
In conclusion, Email will still be the most profitable digital marketing channel in your toolkit, and modernizing your existing approach is key to business growth this year and beyond. With the right data and creative strategy, and adopting advanced solutions to help you get there, you can target, measure, and predict the ROI of signups, purchases, and repurchases with your future campaigns.
Interested in how a CRM strategy can help your brand? Reach out to Direct Agents at [email protected]!