Some key considerations when building and sending emails that will boost your customer experience.

In theory, Email Marketing seems simple — identify your target audience, design a compelling email, send and measure results. But in today’s competitive marketing environment your email will be just one of many emails a consumer can expect to receive any given day. How can you ensure that your message will stand out and ensure a successful email experience?

The first step is to acknowledge that in email marketing one size does not fit all. An email campaign that consistently deploys mass emails to all its customers can seem impersonal and in some cases, result in a high unsubscribe or spam rate which has a negative impact on your deliverability downstream.

In order to create a more successful marketing campaign there are a few key considerations and best practices starting with breaking your customer audience into different segments that can be targeted by specific email campaigns and tailored messages.

Identify segments

Segments will vary depending on your business, what type of data you have on hand, and what your marketing objectives are. For example, you may way to split by products they are purchased and promote similar or complimentary products, or you may want to send them content relevant to pages they have viewed on your site.  There are some solutions available on the market that can compliment your marketing automation and campaign management platform. For instance, Adobe Audience Manager is integratable into Adobe Campaign and serves as a customer profile management system that ties together disparate strands of user data from multiple channels into a single, accessible view. For marketers, it’s a simple, convenient, and intuitive tool that allows them to create effective segments to help target receptive and interested customers with relevant offers.

Consider Frequency

Regardless of what type of segments you create, another important aspect to consider is frequency. While some may look forward to an email each day with new content, others may find that overwhelming and prefer to get a monthly email. Whenever possible, provide customers the option to tell you how often they would like to be contacted so that your email strategy can align with the customers needs. An effective approach is to establish a preference center so your customer and prospects have a way to elect how often and what content they are most interested in either via email CTA or as a landing page on the site.

If you don’t have this information available you can use data to make educated decisions on how often to contact your customers. If you someone who consistently opens your emails and visits your website often, it may make sense to reach out to them on a consistent basis.

However, if you have customers who haven’t engaged with your brand for a long period of time (a general rule of thumb is over a year) you’ll want to be more careful about how and when you contact them. There are potential deliverability risks when reaching out to inactive addresses – as ISPs often flag these addresses as spam traps which can damage you IP reputation.

Monitor & Adjust

It’s important that once you identify your segments and place them into the appropriate communication stream that you continue to monitor engagement and adjust your user experience accordingly. Analyzing your current deliveries can provide you with valuable information about your customers and the type of content they are looking for. You may find that certain types of subject lines and CTAs resulted in a higher response than others, or you may identify that customers should be switched into a different segment for more appropriate messaging.

Customer preferences are constantly changing, but having a strategy in place to listen and react to these preferences, you are on your way to creating a successful email experience.