How often do you refer to your email campaigns as blasts? My guess is that out of habit you do so not only when campaigns are actually batch-and-blast mailings, but also when they’re personalized or targeted.
Well, it’s time to reframe.
Sure, there’s a limited place for batch-and-blast campaigns where the only personalized component is the greeting. But with persnickety customers expecting relevancy and marketers having an ever-growing array of personalization tactics, it behooves marketers to reprogram their approaches—from the way they reference campaigns and customers to the way they segment and strategize.
Let’s talk first about reframing how you think about modern email marketing, using professional athletes as an example. Many professional athletes visualize successful outcomes for training and competition; numerous studies have shown that this visualization, as well as positive self-talk, are highly effective and help set professional athletes apart from the rest of us.
Now it’s your turn to get in the zone: Hanging onto the langauge of mass marketing when attempting to transition to a more personalized approach is counterproductive. It’s time to stop saying “blast,” and time to start saying “campaign” or “mailing.” And it’s time to stop talking about personalization, and actually get personal—that is, see customers as individuals, not just as a mass, nameless source of revenue.
Speaking of getting personal: Please stop calling prospects and customers “targets.” I can understand using “target audience”—there’s still an element of humanity in this definition. But “targets” removes all humanity from the equation. Let’s face it, whether in B2B or B2C, the people you’re marketing to more often buy based on emotion than on rational decisions. So, imagine yourself in your customers’ shoes: Do you want to be someone’s target? It’s time to put a bit more Golden Rule back into email marketing-speak.
In fact, putting customers at the center of your email campaigns is essential today. As contributing writer Eric Krell points out in “We’ve got Our ISPs on You” (page 8), Internet Service Providers are increasingly using engagement metrics, such as opens and clicks, to determine which emails get through to users and which ones are redirected to the spam folder.
The good news is that there are myraid ways to add personal touches to email today—and the options will only continue to increase as new technologies launch that are designed to support them. In “Email, Like Fine Wine, Gets Better With Age” (page 14), contributing writer Jason Compton shares examples of four companies using everything from triggers to video to moment-of-open personalization to refresh their email campaigns and engage their audiences—all to resounding success. As Clark Cummings, senior manager of member marketing at Marriott International, says in the article, “The pendulum has swung, and people are expecting us to use their data. It’s been liberating.”
So, unlike the Golden Oldies that resurface on the radio, it’s time to make email blasts the blast from the past that stays there. It’s time for marketers to use what they know about their customers to get personal with them. As Listrak Chief Brand Strategist Ryan Hofmann points out in “The Email Opportunist” (page 18), “Too many email marketers still deliver the same message to every single subscriber on their list despite having data easily accessible to deliver targeted and personalized messages.”
Don’t be that email marketer. Be the one who puts customers first, and sees a blast of ROI as a result.
