With a 3800% ROI, email is your strongest channel — but you’ve got plenty of competition.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
With a 3800% ROI, email is your strongest channel — but you’ve got plenty of competition. Join top marketers as they discuss the personalization strategies that can dramatically increases open rates, CTR, and, mosts importantly, conversion.
With a far-reaching range of clients including brands such as Ford and Google and nonprofits such as MIT, Tate Modern, and UNICEF, Blue State Digital has unlocked some of the secrets of digital marketing.
“We’ve isolated the common thread that unites people when they care about anything, whether it’s a car brand or a legislative issue,” says Andrew Rothman, Blue State’s Head of Creative and Delivery on the West Coast.
A large portion of their ability to build brand loyalty and boost consumer engagement comes from the email marketing strategies they’ve been honing from the start. When it comes to developing an email campaign, Rothman advises, conversion must always be your key goal. In other words, throw out your open rate metrics.
“It isn’t just getting someone to open your email,” he says. “The goal is to get them to do something outside of that email. Everything that’s sent should be geared toward driving that specific action.”
In order to accomplish that, you need to offer sharp content that’s compelling, interesting, and useful. And in this age of big data, people expect that those emails are going to be targeted to them as individuals, delivering information that is finely tuned to their interests and concerns.
You can’t fake it, Rothman warns — there are too many companies competing for attention, and consumers are getting better and better at tuning out the digital noise.
“It takes a lot of smart planning and a good amount of data engineering to get that right,” says Rothman, “but ultimately it pays off in the end to get people to do that specific thing you want them to do.”
BSD works to glean as much information for each individual from as many places as possible, but Rothman notes an important caveat to this broad approach: It’s too easy to get sidetracked by the nearly infinite possibilities of data you can collect and ways that you can use that data to personalize an email.
Prioritize the metrics that will drive your bottom-line success, focusing personalization on the data points that are most closely correlated with the ultimate action that you’re trying to drive.
The result, Rothman says, is that their personalization strategies, carefully planned, executed and optimized, nearly always show tangible results — for example, tests for nonprofit personalization formulas show anywhere from a five, ten, fifteen percent lift in the amount of money raised. Location-based customization shows similar results.
Setting up the technology platform and data stores that allow real-time, automated email marketing with finely tuned personalization can take a lot of work, Rothman admits. “It takes a lot of data engineering on the backend, plus a lot of front end development,” he says. “But it will pay major dividends in the weeks, months, and years after.”
To learn more about the personalization strategies that boost ROI and the best tools to implement your campaign, join our free webinar!
Don’t miss out.
In this webinar, you’ll learn how to: Narrow down customer interests and respond with content that is actionable and useful Target the right data to appeal to customers’ needs and desires Manage email frequency the right way Identify warning signs that you may have gotten a little too personal
Speakers: Andrew Rothman, Head of Creative and Delivery/West Coast, Blue State Digital Doris Higginbotham , President, Canon Information Technology Services, Inc. Stewart Rogers , Director of Marketing Technology, VentureBeat
Moderator: Wendy Schuchart , Analyst, VentureBeat
More information:
VentureBeat has been exploring mobile and marketing technology via VB Insight, its new research initiative. VB Insight is a marketplace for expertise modeled after a modern app store, with the best insights from both traditional and no... read more »
Stewart Rogers has over 25 years experience of sales, marketing, managing and mentoring in the software and IT industries. He is currently Director, Marketing Technology at VB Insight, a VentureBeat product that is set to revolutionise... read more »
Joe Rospars is Founder & CEO, Blue State Digital. He is graduate in Political Science from George Washington University.... read more »