Rugby is famously a thugs game played by gentlemen. It’s an emerging sport, very popular in some parts of the world, less so in others.
Like Rugby, the use of Email programmes is an emerging discipline and increasing in popularity. Powered by marketing automation, these programmes are the secret sauce that is used by some of the best marketers in the world to create amazing marketing results.
Email Marketing Secret – use email programmes to put points on the board
As in Rugby, you are looking to score some points. But you’ll be looking to score with your customers rather than from a referee.
Each email program you create needs to have an objective – a measurable benchmark to allow you to measure your performance.
To get you started here are some typical business objectives that fit email marketing programmes.
Increasing customer retention, with a ‘miss you’ process. Targeted to customers that haven’t purchased with you in a while (that time period will depend on the typical spend frequency from ‘engaged’ customers)
Getting that VIP customer to access a special flash sale you’ve created just for them.
Nurturing a customer from their first sale to their next sale.
or Helping that prospect to make the right decision and sign up for your amazing business offering.
Email Marketing Secret – Plan your route.
In Rugby, you need to move forward, but you do so by passing backwards.
Same is true when building an email programme for your business.
The best way to drive your business forward is by looking backwards at the data you already hold. Specifically, using the data you have collected from your customers as the foundation for your progress.
If the customer spend activity within your business was being presented as a ‘possession’ graph during a full time round up show, it might look a bit like this…
Email Marketing Secrets – The Marketing Breakdown
Data management and specifically the recency, frequency and spend of your customers. If we reviewed your business based on customer spend frequency, we’d look at five areas – to continue the Rugby theme, let’s call this the marketing ‘breakdown’…
Lapsed customers
Lapsed customers are People/companies that haven’t bought from you for a while. Finding the optimal time when a customer falls into the ‘lapse’ category will depend on the behaviour of all customers. It’s a classic date driven marketing process.
This group is approx 15%-25% of customers for a business.
1 Sale customers
These are people/companies that have bought from you only once.
For some businesses, the product/service lifecycle that they operate could mean that they only buy once. For others, they aren’t really a customer until the purchase more than once.
Since most marketing effort is on acquiring new customers, this group allows marketers to focus efforts on retaining customers. To nurture them to the next sale and make sure that the cost of acquiring each customer turns into a positive ROI.
This group is approx 35%-45% of customers for a business.
2 Sale customers
These people/companies that have bought from you twice. As mentioned in the 1 sale, the importance of the 2 sale will be dictated by the business model of the client.
For most businesses, the 2 sale is a measure of frequency, and used as a monitoring point to move customers to the next stage of customer development.
This group is approx 15%-20% of customers for a business.
2+ Sales
These are people/companies that have bought from you more than twice. In retail terms, this group contains the regulars. The regular customers that are buying from you regularly.
This group is approx 15%-25% of customers for a business.
VIP customers
The Pareto principle also known as the 80/20 rule states that 80% of the revenue collected by a business will generated from 20% of the customers they deal with.
This Pareto rule is one of the key rules used within the development of loyalty programmes.
Understanding those people/companies that represent the top 20% of the revenue created by your business gives you a huge amount of insight on those customers who truly love and value what you do.
This group – the top 20% will show you the customer profile of those who spend the most money with your business.
That allows you to focus your marketing efforts on
- acquiring the ‘right’ kind of customer.
- looking to retain the ‘right’ kind of customer – you know how much they are likely to be worth and can therefore invest in customer development accordingly.
- picking out those new customers that are most likely to become future VIP customers.
Email Marketing Secrets – The Rules
You’ve defined your objectives and the strategy, you’ve picked the audience, now you need to put the plan into action.
However, as with Rugby – it’s not as straightforward as that. You have lots of rules to deal with.
You need an agile approach to guide and nurture your audience through your email programme.
Email marketing is no longer a single message to all your customers. The most successful marketers are now creating programmes which operate a phased approach to each customer based on their position within your business and within the email programme you’ve created.
That is where marketing automation helps. It’s a mechanism that helps power successful email marketing programmes.
Just as a Rugby player needs to carry the ball through lots of obstacles looking to knock them over and stop them from reaching the try line.
Your email programme needs to react to the behaviour of customers to nurture each customer to the next stage of the programme.
Once in place your email programme will ensure that your marketing is always in play and the messages you send will be relevant and engaging.
Just as the forwards (the big lads on the Rugby pitch) provide the platform for the backs to score the points. Putting an email programme in place gives marketers the platform they need to measure and improve marketing performance.
Get started and put some points on the board.
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