Understanding your email audience is essential when sending newsletters or automated emails to subscribers. If you send a generic message that doesn’t provide insight, information or value, it can come across as boring and uninspired. Conversely, making a laser-focused email but sending it to your entire subscriber list may cause readers to feel unimportant and dismiss future emails. These unstrategic approaches can lower the impact of the emails you’re sending and drive up unsubscribe rates. Below are some specific reasons why knowing your email audience is key:
1. Helps to Create Meaningful Conversations
To create a killer email sequence, each sequence should consider ‘who, what, when, why and how’ before being produced. Initially, you need to focus on the ‘who’. An excellent place to start is to segment your audience by demographics, industry, level of engagement and buying habits. Dividing your audience into smaller groups can help you to create more meaningful content as you’ll be able to speak with that target audience as if you knew them personally.
Example:
If the audience segment interacted with a downloadable document about ’10 social media mistakes that all small businesses are making’, you’ll know that they’re likely a small business that is actively thinking about improving their social media presence. Use this information to create impactful email newsletters or sequences that will have them looking forward to future emails from your business. Consider sharing bonus tips that weren’t included in the download to add value.
2. Increases Your Email Open Rate
You risk a poor open rate (and an increased unsubscribe rate) if you send an unimpactful email to an unsegmented list. When someone subscribes to an email list, think of it as though they’re “buying” something from you. They’re providing their information (and email) for something in return (information or offers). When you send a generic email to this list of users who are looking for impactful information, they might open one or two emails hoping that the content gets better, but eventually, they’re likely to regret their “purchase” and will likely unsubscribe in favour of a competitor that provides more informative and meaningful content.
Alternatively, when you send an email to a thoroughly defined audience, you are likely to have a consistent email open rate that increases over time. By providing impactful content you’re meeting and possibly exceeding their expectations, creating users that look forward to your content resulting in higher conversion rates and a better return on investment (ROI).
3. Targets Those Willing to Buy
When you know how people engage with your content, emails or online store, you’re able to really target those who are likely to buy and engage with impactful messages at the right time. This is where having a well-segmented list and knowing your audience shines.
Most email automation platforms can add tags or send different email automation sequences to users depending on how they engage with your site (E.g. what buttons they click within an email). By collecting this data, you can create audience segments that target those with higher intent to buy.
It can take a while for you to segment the lists properly and put these automation tools into play, but once the hard work is done, the results can really drive sales and impact your bottom line.
Long story short, knowing your email audience and targeting the right people will enable you to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. Contact Sims Advertising to discuss how we can help improve your email marketing strategy.
