Email marketing is a great way for businesses to communicate with customers or leads to share updates, promote new products and more. The end goal of this type of marketing, of course, is to reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time, for maximum conversions. That’s where personalization through targeted email marketing can really help.

👀 Want to step up your email marketing strategy? Keep reading! In this article, we provide a quick overview on targeted email marketing and the best tips on how to set it up.

In this post, we explain:

• What is targeted email marketing?
• The benefits of targeted email marketing
• Implementing a targeted email campaign

Segmentation (the process of dividing your email list in smaller segments) can be based on things such as:

• demographics (age, location) 👉 Example: based on geographical location, a clothing brand can send customers based in California some swimwear options vs. some hiking options for Colorado-based customers;
• interests and behaviors 👉 Example: based on past purchase history, a customer who usually buys products from a certain brand on a platform would receive emails about new products offering from this specific brand.

💡 With targeted marketing, possibilities are endless! The more your emails are tailored to the needs of a particular segment, the most likely they are to be engaged, and ultimately, to buy more from you.

The benefits of targeted email marketing

Increased open, click-through and conversion rates

It makes sense: if you deliver personalized messages to specific groups of people, you increase their interest, and therefore your chances of:

• customers opening the email (open rate);
• customers clicking on a button on the email (click-through rate);
• customers actually performing the action you wanted them to do from the start, i.e. using a discount on your site (conversion rate).

Tracking these metrics through a detailed email marketing report helps you understand what’s working and where to optimize, ensuring consistent improvements in campaign performance.

Increased customer loyalty

As a client, have you ever received emails from a company that were irrelevant? What did you think? You probably felt slightly annoyed by opening and reading some content that is of no interest to you, and your perception of the brand itself maybe changed.

💡 Personalized emails help to provide a more positive overall customer experience, which make your customers stay!

Cost-effectiveness

By defining smaller segments, you avoid wasting time and money by sending irrelevant (and useless!) emails. Plus, in general, email marketing is a cost-effective way to reach your audience compared to other marketing channels.

Implementing a targeted email campaign

Here are the main steps you need to take for setting up your targeted email campaign:

1. Identify your target audience: What are the demographics, interests, behaviors of the people you want to reach? 🚀 You can use some customer segmentation tools.
2. Craft personalized messages: What content (promotions, recommendations, new products) could be interested to the target? What kinda of subject line would best grab their attention? 🚀 Use A/B testing tools for testing and picking the best copy!
3. Comply with the law: Do you have a privacy policy in which you inform clients their personal data (i.e. email address) will be used for contacting them? Did you obtain consent for doing so? Do you provide a means to withdraw consent (opt-out) and unsubscribe? Do you keep consent records? 🚀 All-in-one tools like iubenda can help with the legal aspect.
4. Use email automation: What email workflows do you need to set up? Based on what actions? Email workflows can help you manage a series of triggered emails that can be sent automatically depending on specific actions taken by a segment of customers (i.e. potential clients who leave items in their online shopping cart) 🚀 Use tools like HubSpot, Sendinblue, Mailchimp or Drip for your automation!
5. Track and analyze results: How are your campaigns performing? What are the open, click-through, conversion and unsubscribe rates? 🚀 Email marketing tools usually give you an overview of these metrics.

💡 Did you make this one mistake when setting up your email marketing campaign? Find out here!