Trends are changing and with the smart use of email, and the analytics it provides, companies can use the insights gained to refine their one-to-one communications with each and every mailing. But how?

The trend in online marketing is to move away from one-size-fits-all towards individual customer sensing. This term refers to the fine-tuning of online communications based on an individual’s behaviour or triggered by an event (e.g. shopping cart abandonment).

The majority of companies today don’t have sophisticated back-end customer management systems tied into their online marketing, but this shouldn’t be a deterrent to striving for this type of customer relationship. A cost effective and powerful tool is available to any marketer - email newsletters.  They offer marketers tracking, reporting and database capabilities.

The secret is to be timely, targeted and relevant

Aside from being cost-effective, email allows you to provide emails that are timely (right frequency) targeted (to the right person) and relevant (with the right content) – which will be the key to your success.

Here are some tips for using email newsletters to learn and build on your customer’s behaviour and interests:

• Use the metrics from your mailings

One of the most valuable elements of email is its measurability. With analytics you can measure activities and behaviour of individual subscribers per mailing and also over a period of time. The metrics that can be measured include delivery rates, response rates, revenue, lifetime value, sales cost-per promotion, incremental lift and ROI. Tracking this information will allow you to learn about each of your customers and prospects.

Many Email Service Providers offer the ability to have back pages online with your newsletter. The benefits of this approach revolves around better tracking, better depth of readership, a higher placement on search engines and the ability to archive entire issues and integrate them with the company website. By having articles on back pages you will have even deeper metrics for a subscriber’s interest level in a particular event, service or product.

• Aim for ongoing segmentation of your database

If you’re just getting started, review what data you do have within your company, such as sales history, geographical location, anything that gives you a jump-start on your profiling and segmentation.

Here’s an example of one of our customers who has started simply and is moving towards more segmentation in the drive to deliver timely, targeted and relevant mailings. CLM (www.clm.co.uk) is a leading UK-based independent fleet management specialist. The company was initially sending the same monthly newsletter to their entire mailing list - staff, customers and prospects. They started by segmenting the one mailing list into the three groups, and each newsletter was personalised with the appropriate company contact (e.g. MD, customer care or sales contact).

These changes allowed CLM to get more detailed analysis of the results pertaining to each of the groups. This has given CLM a tool for retaining customers, as well as moving prospects into customers. The newsletter also serves as an internal communication tool - keeping staff informed of industry news and relevant company news.

Robert Wentworth-James, CLM’s Head of Sales & Marketing, says “As a result of the segmentation we are also able to send different information to our prospects than that received by staff and clients. So within the same newsletter, by skilful manipulation, we are able to reach different audiences and not have our existing clients hit with sales copy normally reserved for our prospects.”

CLM plans to further increase the personalised elements of the newsletter by having the relevant sales team member’s name in the subject line, together with addressing each recipient of the newsletter with their appropriate salutation.

• Let the customer tell you what they want from you

To gain a real insight what your readers want - ask them! “Customer-controlled content” is a real buzzword in the industry at the moment. One way to provide this is to let the subscriber choose what's relevant to them.  Let the subscriber decide how often and what they want to receive from you. Offer the flexibility to pick areas of interest, frequency, etc. Allow readers the ability to change their selections with each mailing. This will also allow you to segment in the back end based on their choices.

An example of this is the United Nations Volunteer Newsletter. In each edition of the publication they offer subscribers the ability to change the language, the frequency of the updates and the volunteer content they receive. The UN has many volunteer sectors; by offering subscribers the ability to pick and choose what they want to hear about, and change their choices in each edition, they expose readers to a wide variety of sectors, and a better chance of making a perfect match between subscribers and volunteering choice.

• Appending customer and prospect information

If you have customers in your database without email addresses you can consider email appending. This is process of adding a customer's email address to their record. The address is obtained by matching those records from your database against a third-party database to produce a corresponding email address.

Keep the sign up process for your newsletter simple, with a minimum of required fields. Then look at ways to build on that information as your relationship develops. For example, offer a subscriber panel in each of your newsletters that will allow your readers to update their own profile.

Surveys, with incentives, can help you gain further information about subscribers.

Ask for feedback from readers about future content for the newsletter. This feedback could include asking them to rate articles for usefulness.

By Denise Cox,
Newsweaver
Email Newsletter Specialist

Email: denise.blog@newsweaver.co.uk
UK Tel: 0800 904 7955
Tel (Other countries): +353 23 29880
Newsletter: http://www.businessofemail.com
Blog: www.newsweaver.co.uk/emailnewsletters

About: Denise Cox is the Newsletter Specialist for Newsweaver, one of Europe's leading email newsletter software providers. Denise has extensive knowledge in email - from best practice, marketing know-how to content. She has been involved in email marketing since 1996, and provides practical consultancy to Newsweaver’s 600 clients, enabling them to maximise their investment in email. She publishes 'The Business of Email' newsletter and the “Email matters!” blog.