As data becomes the currency of the future, the unique marketing opportunities it creates are immeasurable.
Thanks to data mining and analytics tools, marketers today have the luxury of access to valuable insights into their target audience from diverse sources—like market research, CRM platforms, emails, and social media.
Leveraging this extensive amount of data, companies have the capacity to optimise their marketing campaigns and enhance their presence and reach in the market like never before.
For email marketing, this means the capacity to personalise your messaging and ensure that you’re delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time.
Behavioural analysis
A customer behaviour analysis examines how customers interact with your business—including your brands, websites, products, and applications. This means behavioural data can offer you insight into factors like the purchased products, page views, email sign-ups, and ad clicks of a particular customer.
The ultimate goal of accessing this data is to offer you a comprehensive view to build a full profile of your customers, so you have the insights to optimise customer conversion, engagement, and retention.
Digital behaviour intelligence, for example, lets you see everything your customers do on your website—from mouse movements to page scrolls, which lets you determine which topics capture and keep their interest.
For email marketers, this is a veritable treasure chest to develop the type of content and subjects your emails should centre around. Whether you share industry insights or seasonal offers, understanding unique customer interests lets you impress them with emails optimised to their preferences.
Studies have proven that extensive targeting can improve email marketing revenue by 141%, which means that big data is living up to its promise of greater personalisation efforts.
Real-time personalization
Personalisation is good, but real-time personalisation is better. In an environment where 71% of customers expect companies to deliver a personalised experience, big data offers an exciting opportunity for businesses to improve their email marketing efforts.
Big data allows you to tailor your email marketing content for each recipient effortlessly, no matter the size of your mailing list. The best part? Since the content is based on current behaviour and preferences, you will most likely see much higher conversion rates.
One use of big data when it comes to real-time personalisation is setting up triggered emails. This means that when a customer takes a specific action within the journey, an automated email is sent to them based on the behaviour. An example of this is; if a customer abandons their shopping cart, an automated email is sent with a personalised offer to encourage them to complete their purchase.
Triggered emails are one of the most effective forms of email marketing communications, boasting a staggering 38.03% open rate and 6.76% CTR. They are also highly unlikely to get marked as spam (0.02%) and result in unsubscribing (0.43%).
Big data also enables you to personalise your email communications in real time with specific events such as sending a customer a birthday wish with a special discount code or sending them weather-related offers during specific times of the year.
Having a robust big data infrastructure allows you to collect, process, and analyse large volumes of data quickly and accurately which in turn allows you to make your email marketing communications more relevant and engaging—improving the outcome of your efforts.
Predictive analytics
Predictive analytics uses data algorithms and techniques to determine the likelihood of future events or results based on historical data. In marketing, this translates into more accurate predictions of market trends and customer buying behaviour based on their past interactions with your brand.
Collecting and analysing big data can help businesses gain insight into the current buying behaviours of their customers, which, in turn, can be used to predict a customer’s future purchases.
How does this work? Big data can give you a glimpse into which products are typically purchased together, the type of customers (category) who make these purchases, and slow-moving products.
As a result, when a new client buys one of your items and fits a particular profile (in terms of age, sex, overall spending amount, and geographical location for example) you can determine what the future purchases of the same customer may be like.
You can also predict what purchases may be made by other customers who fit a similar profile. You can potentially boost your sales and revenue by sending new clients who fall within the same profile, a personalised email showcasing the same products purchased by the original customer.
By making informed predictions of market trends and buying behaviour, you can not only optimise your current campaigns but also prepare your brand for the market trends that are likely to dominate the industry.
Customer feedback
No business can afford to overlook customer expectations. This is why gathering customer feedback has gained so much traction in the modern market.
In the digital era, 66% of consumers state they’re more likely to trust a brand that’s gathered a lot of reviews, which means that customer feedback and reviews are the lifeblood of modern businesses.
To sum it up, customer feedback matters. A lot.
So how does this relate to how big data helps your email campaigns? Big data allows you to access feedback and understand the tactics and campaigns that deliver results.
By pairing the data gathered from your specific campaigns with your customer feedback, you’ll be able to make the best use of your email marketing budget for an ROI you can be proud of.
This ability to offer you information for more accurate marketing strategies is what makes big data and email marketing a powerful combination.
Email marketing automation
Automated email campaigns have become one of the most popular methods for maintaining communication with your audience. Not least of all because it requires little intervention from marketing teams.
Behaviour-triggered emails are one form of automated email marketing that helps streamline the customer journey.
This allows you to develop an appropriate action for each trigger and drive customer engagement.
For example:
- An immediate welcome email when someone first subscribes
- A cart abandonment email when a purchase isn’t completed
- A re-engagement email for a customer who hasn’t engaged with you in a while.
Based on the results gathered from big data, you can then fine-tune your emails and determine which marketing tactics work and which don’t within each of your campaigns.
Revenue attribution
Revenue attribution lets you match customer sales to your specific marketing efforts to understand where your revenue is coming from and change your marketing budget in order to make the best use of your resources.
Thanks to big data, not only can organisations use the details of their revenue generation to run insight-backed campaigns, but they can also measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts immediately.
One of the key reasons why this is possible is because big data is collected in real-time.
Now, it’s possible for you to learn all about a client’s interests while that client is browsing your online store, and then use this information to switch marketing tactics immediately.
Based on this, not only can you make sure you’re getting the best returns on your investment, but you can also make necessary changes and strategies to remedy the mistakes of your past campaigns.
In other words, big data lets you make informed decisions, stay responsive to your customers, and improve the quality of your operations.
Segmentation
Segmentation is another key aspect where big data plays a crucial role in email marketing. By dividing your email list into smaller segments based on specific criteria such as demographics, past purchase behaviour, or engagement level, you can tailor your messages more effectively to each group.
This targeted approach allows you to send highly relevant and personalised content to different segments of your audience, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
By analysing data on customer behaviour and preferences, you can identify patterns and trends that inform your segmentation strategy. This enables you to create more targeted and impactful email campaigns that resonate with your audience on a deeper level.
A/B testing
Big data enables A/B testing, a method used to compare two versions of an email or landing page to determine which one performs better. By analysing data on open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, you can identify which elements of your emails are most effective and optimise your campaigns accordingly.
A/B testing allows you to experiment with different subject lines, calls-to-action, and design elements to see which variations resonate best with your audience. This data-driven approach helps you make informed decisions about your email marketing strategy and continuously improve your results over time.
Content optimisation
Big data can also help you optimise your email content for maximum impact. By analysing data on customer preferences, interests, and engagement patterns, you can identify which types of content resonate most with your audience and tailor your emails accordingly.
This may involve experimenting with different types of content, such as articles, videos, or infographics, to see which ones generate the most engagement. By continuously monitoring and analysing your results, you can refine your content strategy over time to ensure that your emails are always relevant, valuable, and engaging to your audience.
The takeaway: Big data refines your email marketing efforts
81% of small and medium businesses are using email marketing as their primary client retention channel.
To make sure your emails aren’t lost among the 333.2 billion emails that are sent every day, you can use big data to personally appeal to your audiences and keep their attention on you over the noise of countless other emails hitting their inboxes.
If you’d like to learn more about leveraging your data for stronger email marketing strategies, don’t hesitate to reach out. Schedule a free consultation with Launchy specialists today!