When it comes to email marketing, one of the most important things to keep in mind is your audience. You need to identify them and determine what they are looking for and how to keep them satisfied.
Jeanniey Mullen, chief marketing officer for Zinio, recently gave a presentation on “The Future of E-Mail” where she identified four new email marketing segments. Mullen says it’s important to be aware of these 4 types of subscribers and to keep them in mind while creating your messaging.
Segment 1: The Social Influencer
This group contains the “cool kids”. These people subscribe to your e-mail, but don’t frequently respond because they are spending most of their time in the social networking scene.
So how do you grab their attention? Send them something really impressive, entertaining and unique. This may not convince them to make a purchase, but they may post it to their online profiles. This gives your content great exposure, as it displays your content and messaging to all their friends and contacts in the social networking world.
Segment 2: The High-Value Customer
This group contains the repeat shoppers. These people frequently click through your e-mails and make regular purchases, but don’t provide any additional promoting or branding.
Think of these subscribers as your short-term revenue drivers, but not your most important e-mailing group.
Segment 3: The Wannabes
This group contains the deal seekers. You present them with a sale item or a featured product and they will make the purchase.
This group can account for around 80% of your mailing list and are looking for the most direction. Give these people a nudge toward site specials and inform them of how to become more engaged in your site. They want to be more involved and keep investing in your product, you just have to show them the way.
Segment 4: The Unsubscribers
This group contains the people that click “this is spam”. They subscribed to your e-mail at one time, but now feel that it isn’t relevant to them or they aren’t getting the deals they were looking for. Sometimes they unsubscribe and sometimes they simply click “this is spam” to end your mailings.
So how do you benefit from this group? Re-evaluate your content and messaging, ask yourself how you can make your e-mails more beneficial. Then start the sweet talking and try to get them back. Not all PR is good PR and you don’t want one unsubscriber telling their friends how lame your product or web site is.
If you can identify these segments in your mailing list and optimize accordingly, expect for your open and click-through rates to improve. Also keep in mind that every customer is valuable in different ways and take advantage of every opt-in you receive.
