Targeted Email, A Simple Guide To More Revenue and Increased Margins

Follow These 6 Steps To Create A Successful Targeted Email Business

Welcome to Summit Thoughts, the new sO2 Digital Blog. As digital thought leaders, we will share our experiences in digital services and advertising. You will hear from our Account Management, Ad Operations and Social Media teams on how they make digital services and advertising work for our clients.

To start, we’ll tackle the often-overlooked targeted email.

In the next six blog posts, we will take you through the ins and outs of prospecting, pitching, designing, delivering, re-targeting, reporting and renewing targeted email campaigns. In each blog post, we’ll detail part of the formula for success. 

Targeted email isn’t sexy like social media, and it isn’t bought programmatically like display ads and doesn’t have the hype and buzz of OTT. But, targeted email gets results. It drives some of the best ROI of any digital media product. 

This post will re-introduce you to targeted email in six easy steps and will provide an overview for a successful targeted email campaign. Then stay tuned for the next six weeks as our team provides direction for each step along the way. 

Step 1: Determine Who to Target 

What types of businesses will have the most success with targeted email? We want to do business with clients who are already positioned to measure the results, and who have a built-in budget to run multiple campaigns. 

The first place to look, and in many cases the only place to look, is toward clients doing direct mail. These folks are easy pickings because targeted email is less expensive and delivers better results than direct mail. 

Step 2: Position 

To focus on clients who spend money on direct mail, your positioning statement is simple: “Targeted email will deliver better, and measurable, results for less money.” Email marketing’s average ROI is the best in the industry, a 42:1 ROI. Your client gets the quick, measurable response they want from direct mail, and the cost efficiency of targeted email.  

Step 3: Design

When setting up the creative for a targeted email campaign, think about measurable results. The best way to do this is to provide the end-user with an offer. The good news is 72% of end-users expect an offer in their inbox. That’s why they sign up to receive emails in the first place. 

Step 4: Deliver

This is the easiest step. Make sure to work with a double-opt-in, Can-Spam Act-compliant vendor that can provide a robust source of targeting options. Your targeted email vendor should send HTML-based responsive emails that can be opened and read on any device and operating system. Your vendor should be able to send an email within 24 hours of receiving orders and provide accurate and up-to-date reporting.

Step 5: Re-target

Your vendor should offer several re-targeting options. Starting with a re-blast, send a follow-up email to the same users who received your initial email, or to the users who opened your email showing interest in your client’s product or service. Other re-targeting options include presenting display ads to those same users or, even better, generating a postal file to receive the first/last name and physical addresses of people who received your email. 

The postal file can be used to match names on the postal file to the names of people who purchased your product or service. The postal file can also be used to match a mobile ID, social ID and IP address to create more re-targeting options. 

Step 6: Report and Renew 

As with any advertising campaigns, it’s important to assess the effectiveness of your email marketing dollars. Why not do this with the list of names of people who received your email? You can then match this list to the consumers who buy your products or services. Is there any better confirmation than that? 

You will also get open rates, click-through rates, and the ability to use UTM parameters for tracking traffic to your website. These reporting tools, combined with actual sales, make renewing a targeted email campaign simple. 

Stay tuned to the Summit Thoughts Blog for detailed information on the six steps to targeted email campaign success. We’ll guide you on a path of easier sales and revenue for your business or sales staff.