Email marketing is a cost-effective and easy-to-implement marketing technique that delivers real and measurable results. It is an excellent tool to keep your customers informed of any news or innovations. It is also the most efficient option for contacting potential customers and establishing regular communication with them, enabling the sales team to make “real” contact, at a later stage.
In addition, planning and programming a relevant flow of messages, segmented and personalized, will be highly valuable and will allow you to better monitor and evaluate its impact.
But how do you build a quality email database? Here are some of the main elements to consider:
Making the most of the contacts you already have
The sales department is the first source of database feeds, with the two easiest types of contacts to list:
- Existing customers;
- Contacts made through commercial meetings, at trade fairs and events, or responses to information requests received.
Organizing all these records in a coherent and functional way is the best way to create an effective database. Don’t forget to define the segmentation criteria that will help you target the right audiences for each message sent.
Identifying other sources of database feeds
Where and how to get new quality leads? This is the challenge.
Evaluate both external sources and your own contact acquisition tools: we help you to define them and to design and implement lead acquisition actions, both in the Spanish market and in foreign markets.
- Internal:
Contact forms, landing pages or pop-ups on the website, registration forms, social networks…
- External:
Professional online platforms, cobranded newsletters with media or sectorial publications, participation in webinars, purchase of databases, attendance at trade fairs or professional conferences, SEM campaigns…
Contact us if you would like support in lead generation.
But how can you convince potential leads to share their data?
Offer quality content, relevant to your audience: personal data is valuable and requests a valuable counterpart in return. If you have segmented your audience, you will know what they are interested in: Samples? A white paper? A specialized catalogue? Templates? CAD files? A discount code (if you have an online shop)? A contest or giveaway? In any case, valuable content for your potential lead.
Remember that your database feeding and management strategy must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation: it is designed to protect individuals with regard to the processing of their personal data and the movement of such data. All your contacts must have expressly agreed to receive your emails. Contact us if you wish to clean and optimize your contact list with regard to GDPR.
We already have a database, what do we do now?
- Segment and manage your list effectively
The database is a transversal, living, constantly evolving tool that must be fed from Marketing and Sales, as well as from the Projects, After Sales or Customer Service departments.
Not all your contacts have the same interests or the same priorities, they should therefore not receive the same messages. Segmentation is crucial to contextualize a message to make it even more valuable and, ideally, will reach the target at the right moment in their buying journey…
“Who they are” and “what they have done” are the two most simple questions to answer in order to create a basic segmentation. “Who they are” refers to demographics such as profession, location, or position within a company. “What they have done” refers to the actions you know they have taken (on or off your website: whether they have purchased, downloaded catalogues, attended trade shows, etc.). For example, a potential customer might have downloaded a brochure, while another might have opted for a specific offer. Any email marketing system will allow you to easily segment your list and automate campaigns to be sent to your different leads at a time of your choosing.
With the right database, you will be able to send to current or potential customers specific campaigns that reward them for their loyalty as well as recommend related products (cross-selling and up-selling), communicate new projects in which your brand has participated, and technical videos with assembly tips, personalized catalogues, etc.
- Choosing an email automation tool
Choose an email marketing tool that will help you design, send and evaluate your campaigns. Most popular email platforms include Mailchimp or Sendinblue, which are intuitive and very affordable. Other quality automation providers include Campaign Monitor, Pardot (included within Salesforce Marketing Cloud) or Constant Contact.
It all depends on your needs and the level of resources you want to invest.
If you prefer to outsource, contact us: we will take care of defining the content calendar with you, designing it, generating it, automating its delivery to your lists and evaluating the results.
Remember: we all have an infinite amount of data and information, but few of us exploit it fully, because of lacking time, not being organized well enough, or due to a lack of internal resources…
If you are looking to optimize your systems and organize your data, we are at your disposal: contact us here.