Nailing email marketing with hyper-personalised and relevant content
In this episode of Pepper Content’s Top of the Funnel series, Tanishq Juneja, Global Product Marketing Head at Netcore, talks about how he became 'the email guy' by taking his email marketing game to the next level.
Netcore Cloud is a globally recognised marketing technology SaaS company offering a full-stack of marketing technology solutions that support marketers to deliver AI-powered intelligent customer experiences across all touchpoints of the user’s journey.
Tanishq Juneja has been working with Netcore Solutions for 12 years now, and has become the go-to person for email marketing solutions. Here’s a masterclass with Tanishq on establishing certain ground rules if you're a business owner or a marketer.
“The expectation is that brands can deliver customer experience at scale. Thus, hyper-personalisation is here to stay. Each user is going to become a segment. And when I say hyper-personalisation, it is exactly like creating campaigns, but those will be relevant to each user in their location, in their habits, and the way they shop."
"The future is how AI can help or how any of these technologies can create hyper-personalisation and do segmentation of users. All of this will ultimately lead to the greatest customer experience,” says Tanishq, as he starts with some inputs on the future of email marketing.
The evolution of email marketing
From receiving birthday emails 15 years ago to building long-time connections, email marketing has surely come a long way. Brands have graduated from batch and blast to getting more curious about conversation and innovations. They're trying to offer interactive ways to engage with the users via texts, videos, audio, and anything that sails their boat.
Right after the pandemic, marketers have again started using emails as a channel to communicate directly. Their focus shifted from conversion to conversation. They now want to build a connection with people rather than transacting with them because a lifetime bond with a user is much more important now. Thus, brands have started paying extra attention to empathy conversations and building a long-lasting network.
Top hacks for acing email marketing
“Email is not a standalone channel; it’s part of the marketing mix. It does not set the periphery. It sits inside the entire marketing strategy. Conversion is an outcome of all of these strategies,” explains Tanishq, as he talks about some of the important tips to get your email marketing strategy going.
- To scale email marketing efforts and collect a database, ensure that you have a persuasive subscription form on the website. Do a lot of innovation with the traffic coming on the website and the form. Ensure the reader can find the form in less than five seconds, or you may lose out on a potential customer.
- Create a compelling subject line. You may have great content inside an email, but that will only work if the reader actually opens the email. So, how do you create a great subject line? Follow the value and cost model. Give your information only to the places where there is more value given to you. A valuable exchange can help you land more information than you expected. This model allows you to think of the pain areas, put them down, and then tailor solutions suitable to each segment.
- Start building relationships. Don’t focus on tactical sales content only. By knowing what people are clicking or what kind of audience is interested in what kind of products, you can start producing data-driven results.
The key metrics for email marketing
There are some very basic metrics which any email program should track. Like, tracking how many emails were sent, how many were opened, what is the click rate, how many people visited the website, how many dropped out, how many unsubscribed, how many actually bought the product/service, etc.
“Usually, when sending out promotional email campaigns, don't just track open clicks. Define various stages of a user journey and set metrics accordingly. Keep an eye on who stays in the email program and who moved out. Mostly, anyone can identify a reader who is on the verge of unsubscribing. At such a time, a marketer always has an option to save the relationship with instant communication. Regularly analysing the key metrics lifts off such kind of burden,” explains Tanishq.
Hyper-personalisation and its relevance
Marketing has evolved from plain text and images to full-fledged communication. The right content is being sent to the right user. Email marketing is also gunning towards it. One of the innovations, which is happening now, is welcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI). Optimisation can be done in ways where an email campaign can be generated within seconds on the basis of past patterns of the opening emails.
“So, the future of email marketing is that the probability of an email ending up in the inbox is only going to decrease. The inboxing is going to get tougher and tougher. Thus, AI is going to help in the optimisation. AI will read the content and predict the segment which will have a high probability of engagement,” explains Tanishq.
Brands today are moving from sending a promotional email to creating a fantastic user experience.
“When they see my email campaign, they should love it. And hence, they should look forward to my mail. And if I fail on that attempt, even once, then I have failed to create the story my user wants. Thus, innovations are going to help brands create a great customer experience,” Juneja adds.