Staying Relevant with Targeted E-Mail

Personalized, segmented campaigns combat inbox clutter

Last year saw record numbers of promotional e-mails and recipients annoyed by inboxes full of too many marketing messages. To grab users’ attention in the space, more than one-half of small and medium-sized businesses told e-mail marketing firm GetResponse they would focus on personalization and targeting in 2010.

Nearly six in 10 respondents to the survey planned on segmenting their e-mail lists based on interests, while about one-third would look at behaviors such as open and click rates or demographics.

Among marketers worldwide surveyed in 2009 by Econsultancy, 93% believe segmentation was at least somewhat valuable for improving conversion rates. And the most important e-mail marketing initiative business executives around the globe planned to implement in 2010—after the generic “better performance” option—was to improve segmentation and targeting techniques.

For example, behavioral targeting based on subscribers’ previous open click rates is one technique, and more than three-quarters of respondents to the GetResponse poll considered it at least moderately effective for improving e-mail campaigns.

Small and medium-sized businesses also planned to fight inbox clutter this year by using better subject lines (52.4%), offering special deals and gifts (37.7%), finding the right time of day to send (28.3%) and split-testing content (25.9%).

Article quoted from eMarketer.com