Getting Started with Email Marketing Part 2: How to Best Use Customer Acquisition Data

So, you’re clear on who your existing customers are, and you now have the acquisition data to go get more of them. Now what do you do?

In Part 1 of this two-part blog post on getting started with email marketing, we covered the steps you should take before acquiring customer acquisition data, and how to best select the right data to initiate your campaigns. Now, in Part 2, we’re providing the steps to take once you have your acquisition data and are ready to start using it.

1) Inform; don’t sell

Start by crafting email campaigns that deliver helpful, insightful content of real interest to your prospects. You do NOT want to start off on the wrong foot with a heavy-handed or salesy message, as doing so can not only turn off your audience, but such messages can also trigger SPAM blockers and filters. Speaking of which, make sure you are in compliance with CanSpam regulations for transmitting emails – or you may face potentially dire consequences.

2) Leverage experts to ensure success

To ensure optimal success, achieve maximum return from your data investment, and avoid learning “the hard way,” consider using third party experts that ensure you have an email template that is optimized for delivery. After all, if your message never reaches its audience, you are wasting your time and investment. Such experts will not only prevent your message from getting blocked by email providers or relegated to SPAM boxes, but will also ensure your message is delivered to and rendered correctly on mobile devices. More and more electronic communications is consumed on mobile devices, so enabling this capability is a must anymore.

In addition, it will not be efficient to use Outlook, Gmail or other standard email systems for your mass email communications. Instead, you’ll want to use a robust email delivery platform, such as Act-On or others available on the market.

3) Create a sales funnel

If done correctly, your initial email campaigns will yield some interested prospects -- people who clicked on your message’s call to action (CTA), giving you some leads. Success!

You’ll want to have a plan ready of what to do with these leads once you get them. While this could include calling them right away, a better option is to move them to a separate list for lead “nurturing.” This could entail sending them regular follow-up communications (known as “drip campaigns”) on their topic of interest based on their previous behavior (e.g. they clicked to view a whitepaper), with the hope that they will continue to engage with your content, and continue taking the next step in the sales process. Such incremental steps could include attending a webinar, watching a video or downloading a coupon.

Use a CRM (customer relationship management) system to keep track of which prospects are responding to what content, and send the right message to the right prospects.

Once you’ve engaged with your prospects via your informative content, they will view you as a trusted advisor, be more open to further communications, and, hopefully, turn to you as paying customers.

For those who would like more information on this subject, I recently participated in a webinar on how to best leverage acquisition data, along with pre-sales programs offered by our partner, C-Level Connections. Check it out!

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If you need help connecting with your ideal prospects and driving higher levels of data quality for your email marketing campaigns, consider giving Outward Media, Inc. (OMI). a try. OMI is a leader and innovator in the direct marketing industry. Since our founding nearly two decades ago, OMI has been delivering the highest level of sales and marketing success to our customers through groundbreaking data delivery models and unmatched data quality and accuracy.

 

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