The information you should be capturing to improve your email marketing efforts

Jalna Soulage says email marketing isn’t dead,  just different.

Change in email marketing has taken place because consumer expectations have also changed; they are now higher than ever. Modern customers require not only a relevant experience, but an interesting one, too. Sending the same message repeatedly over and over to individuals on a mailing list is no longer an effective method of reaching customers.

However, email still remains an important component in any marketer’s toolkit. With this in mind, marketers need to make sure that they tailor their email correspondence in order to make messages more relevant. This makes email a more effective approach, and in turn enhances the customer experience: primarily because their emails are focused on something they are actually interested in.

In order to improve the personalisation of your marketing, it is important to know more about the customers you are trying to reach. This is where sourcing data on your customers can prove slightly more challenging when trying to engage new prospects, as you won’t have the same amount of information available as you may have from existing customers.

This then presents the question of which information you should ask for when collecting data. It’s important to make your customer feel at ease at this stage, as asking for too much in-depth information can put off prospective customers.

To effectively personalise your email marketing messages, the minimum amount of information you need to gather is:

Email address – In the first instance, your customer’s email address is vital to be able to market via the email channel. It is also unique to each customer, and allows brands to enhance their relationship with their customers, while building loyalty and greater engagement.

Name – Addressing your customer by name creates a much greater personal experience when both included in the subject line and in copy. Directing your email to a specific person in this way also highlights that your message is not spam, and is less likely to be ignored.

Date of birth – Using this data to create birthday and special occasion messages is an excellent way of engaging positively with a customer and is a good opportunity to make them feel valued.

Mobile number – As customers are relying on mobiles more and more, brands can make the most of this opportunity by sending text messages to their customers for sales announcements.

Address – Depending on what your brand goals are, you may also want to collect details of your customer’s postal address. This is often a required at check-out stage for delivery, but can also be extremely valuable for geo-targeting, which can enable you to let your customer know when a new store is opening nearby, or to send invitations to events which may be relevant for them.

Geo-targeted content is a great way to generate much more engagement than a standard email. Although collecting a full address is sometimes a time-consuming process, postcode entry which can auto-populate the address is a quick and user-friendly way to attain the sufficient information to provide the most relevant geographical information for customers.

When is the best time to attain this data?

Potential customers will be more willing to provide their details as long as they can see value in doing so, and what you are offering needs to be worth their while. Techniques such as progressive profiling, where you accumulate data types of a longer period of time and touchpoints – can help, but essentially, it comes down to the value of the offering you can provide.

As always, it is vital to put the customer first here and to remember that you’re not trying to ‘trick’ them into providing their data. Customers need to know why they are providing their information and what they can expect in return. This way, you can be sure that the data collected will be from engaged and relevant potential customers.

Improving the customer experience

Asking for personal information will always be a sensitive subject for many customers. The most important thing to remember is that it always comes down to the customer experience. Take a step back and ask yourself, is what you’re going to send your recipient of the value that they are expecting?

Equally, you need to make sure that, when you have the data, you are using it to make your marketing more relevant to the individuals in question. Some messages and industries really don’t need to go too far with personalisation and should think realistically about whether they’re really adding to and improving the experience of their customers. Do all brands need to send a birthday campaign? Do all industries need a mobile number? Should personal finance brands send an SMS?

If personalisation is relevant to your brand and the campaign you are thinking about, then it’s definitely something you should consider – but to do it you need to have the right sorts of data and that data needs to be accurate. Make sure you’re making the most of the tools you have on offer and are collecting the right data at the right points in the customer journey. But, above all, put the customer first.