A Beginner’s Guide To Data-Driven Email Marketing
In the third instalment of our Email Marketing Strategy Series, Showtime’s Cinema Marketing Expert Amin Karam shares his tips on mastering an effective strategy.
Some of the most common challenges when it comes to email marketing surround basic metrics like hitting your email open rates, click-through rates, deliverability and compliance with email regulations. In order to be successful, it all comes down to having a sharp and integrated email marketing strategy.
No matter the size of your business or marketing team, you need to have a clearly defined strategy in place to be able to reach your goals. Experts agree that in order to have an effective email marketing strategy and get your emails seen, you have to adhere to this framework:
Significance of segmentation
Power of personalisation
Impact of data-driven analysis
Significance of segmentation
The first pillar of this framework is seemingly simple, but very important. Segmentation means dividing your email subscribers into small segments based on a strategic set of criteria that you've determined.
The 4 basic types of market segmentation are:
1. Demographic
2. Psychographic
3. Geographic
4. Behavioural
When thinking about how to market to a cinema audience, attributes like age (demographic), location (geographic), movies seen (behavioural) or preferred booking channel (behavioural) are great examples when it comes to cinema email marketing.
Segmentation can help you send the right message, to the right people, at the right time. It means focusing on the context of your message as much as the content you deliver.
“77% of email marketing ROI came from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns.”
Power of personalisation
In today's world customers expect personalisation in all marketing they get from modern companies. In email however, personalisation is so much more than adding the first name of the recipient to your email.
Email personalisation is when you can use your subscriber data to make your email feel customised for each individual, making it even more relevant to that specific subscriber. It’s about creating a contextualised and individual experience based on actions they take. This is known as Behavioural Email. Whenever you send a behavioural based email, you’re creating a highly personalised experience for your contacts.
Impact of data-driven analysis
In a world that’s always changing, the most important thing to remember is that your customers behaviour is also changing. The changing lifestyle of consumers has caused shifts in behaviour and traditional trends. Take away food has continued in its increasing popularity even in the wake of the pandemic, and the restaurant boom has slowed. Work patterns have changed so less people are leaving their homes, shopping centres - many of which are home to multiplex theatres - are experiencing footfall challenges, and with a surge in the number of people moving home or moving out of cities the traditional ‘loyal’ customer base is now changing. Add all of this to the lingering fear of Covid and it results in a major shift in the make-up and behaviour of your customer base.
Data-driven analysis like ours in Showtime Engage helps you evolve with them, making sure you don’t get left behind with guesswork and outdated data.
By analysing your emails consistently and having emails as one of the core parts of your marketing strategy you’ll give your customers what they need to continue the conversation with you.
To implement data-driven analysis into your email marketing you’ll want to keep in mind this framework:
- Track the metrics that matter
- Learn what those metrics indicate about success
- Apply what you have learned to optimise and improve