It has been more than 50 years since the origin of emails. Keeping pace with the rate of technological innovation over time and the innumerable new ways to connect with others over the internet, any expert would have bet on emails being obsolete years ago. Therefore, it is indeed fascinating to know the importance of personalized emails still holds in the business world.
Emails are the perfect professional medium today to keep in touch with clients, as well as to target new prospects.
When it comes to tapping the market through emails to bring in more leads for your business, there are two basic methods to execute email marketing - Bulk Emails and Personalised Emails.
Difference Between Bulk Emails and Personalised Emails
- Bulk Emails
Emails that are sent out to a large number of recipients at once are classified as bulk emails. They consist of marketing messages that are addressed to the masses simultaneously at large. A crucial prerequisite to implementing this campaign is to have a database of email addresses to which the emails can be sent.
Since bulk emails do not focus on an individual email receiver, the basic strategy here is to entice as many recipients as possible to open the emails and read them.
For example, consider that a campaign has an email open rate of 35% (which is generally considered as excellent). Hence, it does not matter whether the remaining 65-70% of the recipients read the emails. The email campaign will still be considered success (provided it has a positive ROI).
Therefore, this makes email marketing suitable to be implemented in the Awareness Stage of the buyer’s decision-making cycle (or the top of the marketing funnel) and is ideal for the creation of leads - usually cold ones.
Moreover, emails are 6 times more likely to drive a click through to links when compared to tweets and are 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than social media.
- Personalized Emails
What is even better than leads? Hot leads. Personalized emails come into the picture here since they are targeted to convert every recipient with the help of the background information that is available about them. Emails are curated keeping in mind the pain points of the target customer and offer personalized benefits or make use of customized marketing leverages.
Personalized emails are considered better at generating hot leads and offer a high ROI as compared to bulk emails. On average, such emails improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%. But they are extremely time-consuming to implement. Keeping this in mind, Clodura combines the best of both worlds by providing you with unlimited contact details of customers as well as automated personalized emails for all of them. This helps you save a lot of time and effort which can now be invested in closing the leads.
How to Write a Meaningful Personalized Email?
If you are looking to write a personalized email yourself, here are some proven techniques that can be used –
- Find a Middle Ground
An effective way to extend an arm of trust is to find a common point of discussion through which you can take the conversation ahead. What does the data about the prospective client say to tell you about their pain points? How can you solve that problem through your services/products? Addressing this in the email will surely help to convert them.
- Date and Time of Email
Many marketers prefer not to send any sales emails on Monday since it is often the busiest day of the week for companies. On the other hand, sending emails to the overseas clients according to your own office timings will only attract fewer eyeballs on your emails.
The best bet is to segment your readers based on the data points like their geographical locations and office hours for better conversions.
- Use A/B Testing for Optimisation
Hubspot carried out an interesting experiment once. They were testing ways to make their emails more personalized. They tested this by sending out two emails - one signed off by Hubspot and another by a member of their marketing team. The results were intriguing. The former mailer got a click-through a rate (CTR) of 0.73% and the latter a CTR of 0.96%.
This proves that people trust an email more when received directly from a person. At the same time, it proves how important A/B testing is.
Benefits of Personalized Emails
As you may have guessed by now, personalized emails are far better than bulk emails. Here are the benefits that they offer -
According to research, personalized emails are more likely to be opened by 26% when compared to bulk emails. Hence, they are better at creating more leads.
Marketers have been able to generate a 760% increase in email revenue from personalized campaigns focused on segmented groups. This proves that such emails are also better at converting leads.
Since they provide more value to the readers as compared to bulk emails, personalized emails have much better chances of passing the spam filters of email service providers.
Not only is personalization better at lead generation and conversion, but it also helps to retain the customers. Marketing campaigns such as post-purchase personalized emails are a perfect way to do so.
There is more yield with fewer data. Since the message that reaches the readers are customized according to their needs, the database requirement of such campaigns is far less than that required to implement bulk email campaigns. Hence, the output is more even with fewer resources.
Personalized emails indeed involve a huge amount of research and hard work. Hence, Clodura has come up with the perfect solution. We provide you with a huge database of contact details as well as send out automated personalized emails on your behalf with the help of numerous data points about prospects.
How Do Email Spam Filters Work?
Now that you know all about personalized mailers, it is also important to know about spam filters and what triggers them. If not managed efficiently, these filters can single-handedly bring down your entire campaign.
Spam filters are a type of program that differentiates useful emails from the unsolicited ones. They prevent unwanted emails from reaching the user’s inbox in a bid to provide a better user experience.
For a successful email marketing campaign, it is crucial to curating emails in a way that they pass the filter tests of these programs.
How to Avoid Spam Filters?
Here are 5 things you need to take care of before implementing your email campaign
- Choose a reliable ESP
Spam filters have a tendency to block emails originating from unreliable sources. Hence, it is important to choose the right Email Service Provider (ESP) which is both popular and secure to use.
- Avoid Deceptive Subject Lines.
Subject lines that try to deceive the readers into reading the emails will always end up in the spam folders. For example - telling the reader that he/she has won a prize in the headline, only to reveal some conditions in the email body that need to be met. Or starting the email with ‘Re:’ to falsely indicate a reply and hence give an impression of an ongoing conversation.
- Concealing Text in Images
Using images to convey the deceptive message to your readers instead of including them in the email body will also trigger the spam filters.
- Too Many Sales Orientation
Emails overusing words like ‘prize’, ‘purchase’, ‘buy’, ‘bonus’, ‘order now’, ‘free’, etc. often end up in the spam folder. At the same time, using too many exclamation marks (!!!) at the end of sentences and overdoing with CAPITAL LETTERS can also be misread as a forced sales technique.
- Interactive Emails
Making your emails overly interactive may also end up with them being marked as spam. Examples can be emails consisting of JavaScripts, RSS feeds and even forms.
It’s crucial for every business to understand and make the best of email marketing in order to get potential leads for sustainable growth. And If this proves too much for you to handle, leave every hassle on us. Check out Clodura today and revolutionize your sales processes. Also, please share your views about the blog in the comment section below.
