Is Email Targeting The Secret To Online Success?

Email targeting is the difference-maker in email marketing. It’s also the catalyst behind many successful email campaigns. 

By now you’ve probably heard them say “the money is in the list” at least a million times. And while that is true, that’s only part of the story. 

Email marketing gives you the ability to speak with your audience directly. This allows you to make incredible ROI even if your emails are generic. 

But generic emails won’t get you the 4200% profits that successful email marketers are used to. That means, for every $1 invested in their email campaigns, they receive $42 dollars in return.

You won’t find that kind of ROI anywhere else online. And it’s all thanks to the power of email targeting. 

So, let’s have a look at targeted emails and why they are so powerful.

What Is A Targeted Email?

A targeted email is one sent to a very specific subset of your email list. These emails are always very relevant to their recipients. And they are sent based on how your subscribers interact with your business.

Think about it this way, everyone interacts with your business in a different way at different times. Plus everyone is different. Your email list will be made up of people with different:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Shopping Habits
• Hobbies and Interests
• Relationship statuses 
• Needs
• Etc.

And you cannot overlook these differences. If you do, you’ll end up sending unwanted emails to people who won’t benefit from them. 

Instead, what you need to do is segment your list. Before that you can also clean up your list from emails that are no longer active.

What Is List Segmentation?

Email list segmentation is a way to divide your email list into smaller groups. It helps you manage them better. 

It allows you to group your subscribers by common traits. For example, if you have a list with global subscribers, you may want to segment your list based on location. 

Then send specific emails to each subscriber based on their individual locations.

A 4th of July email would be appropriate for Americans on Independence Day. A St. Patrick’s Day email would be more relevant to Irish people than to Caribbean nationals. 

The same goes for gender. Let’s say you sold clothing through an online Shopify store and catered for both men and women. An email sent to your audience would have to take their gender into consideration as well. 

Imagine what would happen if you sent an email about your new make-up line to men who don’t even use make-up. They would quickly dismiss your message and toss it in the spam folder.

When we look at purchase history, the relevance of your emails is just as important. 

Thank you emails are appropriate after someone makes a purchase with your business. But what would happen if we sent these emails to people who didn’t buy anything? 

You’d come off as unprofessional and generic. 

That’s where list segmentation comes in. It makes it easy to target the right people with the right information. 

Segmenting an email list ensures that each subscriber receives content relevant to them. As a result, it’ll increase engagement levels and improve deliverability results.

The more detailed segments you create in this process of targeting people. It will lead them down less-traveled roads, where most sales happen!

Adding Email Automation

List segmentation makes email targeting easy. But the process still needs to be automated. Automation allows your email marketing to be more responsive to your subscribers. 

Let’s say you sent an email prompting your latest product launch. 

Some of your subscribers may buy right away and some won’t. So the follow-up emails sent to both groups cannot be the same. People who did not buy may need more convincing and so follow-up emails sent to them should be for that purpose. 

While purchasers should ideally receive a thank you email. Then follow up content about getting the most out of your latest product. So, you’ll need to create a new segment for all purchasers. 

This is just one example. You may also create segments of inactive subscribers or new options. 

This whole process is made easy through the power of email automation. List segmentation and email automation is the recipe for super target emailing.

Of course, you’ll need a powerful email autoresponder that facilitates this process. 

Benefits of Targeted Email Marketing 

Now, email targeting may seem like a daunting task at first but it actually makes your life a whole lot easier. 

Here are 10 unignorable benefits of targeted email marketing:

Email Targeting Is Cost-Effective 

The more targeted your emails are the more conversions you will make. People are more likely to interact with content that’s relevant to them. More engagement means higher open rates, more clicks, and more conversions. 

Email Targeting Is Time Efficient 

The power of email automation saves you a great deal of time spent on email marketing. Each subscriber interacts with your business differently. As such, your communication with them cannot be generic. 

Automated email sequences allow you to send appropriate emails to each subscriber.  And best of all, these emails get sent out at the perfect time. 

So you’ll never have to do any of this by hand.

Email Targeting Allows You To Engage The Right People 

With a well-targeted campaign, you can reach your ideal customer with a single email! 

It’s not a numbers game, it’s a relevance game. Sending irrelevant emails will only get your content marked as spam. 

But the more targeted your emails are, the more likely people are to engage with them. 

Email Targeting Leads To Better Engagement Rates 

People are very responsive to targeted campaigns. That’s why advertising agencies make it a point to understand their ideal customers. And the same is true for email marketing. 

The better you know your subscribers, the better you’ll be able to communicate with them. And the easier it is to target their needs. As such, your engagement rates will be higher than non-targeted email campaigns. 

In turn, this results in better open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

Email Targeting Increases Brand Reputation 

Targeted emails show that you understand your subscribers and care about their needs. This helps to separate you from the competition and enhances your brand’s reputation. 

Over time, email targeting helps to firmly position you as an authority in your niche. 

Email Targeting Improves Customer Relationships

One of the better aspects of email marketing is the ability to create brand loyalty and repeat customers. Targeted emails show that you are attuned to the needs of your audience and trying to solve them. 

This shows that you value your subscriber’s opinions. When you can take your customers’ feedback into account and send targeted messages based on it, they’ll be more likely to respond. 

Email Targeting Makes Your Content More Personal

The more targeted your emails are, the easier it is to add elements of personalization. This may include:

• Name
• Location
• Recent Purchase History
• And Mobile Device (Samsung or Apple)
• etc.

This makes the whole tone of your email interactions more conversational and natural. And your subscribers will feel like they’re talking to a friend who knows them personally. You can find more of our email copywriting tips here.

Email Targeting Helps You Stay Ahead of Trends 

When you know what your subscribers like and dislike and how often they open emails. Use this information when deciding which products you should promote in future campaigns.  By tracking customer interests, you can determine the value of your marketing efforts.

Email Targeting Improves Customer Loyalty And Trust

Remember, there are bound to be tons of competitors in your niche. All vying for a spot in your recipient’s inbox. You have to go above and beyond for your audience to earn their trust and loyalty. 

Thankfully, this is quite easy to do. Sending only relevant and personalized emails puts you one step ahead. 99% of email marketers will not even attempt to understand their audience.

That little extra effort on your part will distinguish your brand and make you the go-to person in your niche. 

Email Targeting Produces Better ROI

The bottom line of any email marketing strategy is to boost conversions and scale. And how do we do this? We give people what they want when they want it. Relevancy with perfect timing. 

That’s why every successful online marketer invests in quality email autoresponders. 

It’s better to send relevant emails to a targeted audience than a generic email blast. 

Hence, marketers who have perfected these strategies routinely see up to 4200% ROI.

How to Create A Targeted Email List 

Now that we can see how important email targeting is, there’s still one more thing to consider. Our email lists themselves. 

If we create generic lists then even the most targeted campaigns will not be fruitful or responsive. Instead, we need to create responsive email lists and the key to that again is targeting. 

It is through targeting that we better understand who our customers are. This information will help us later on to create email segments. 

So, how do we actually go about creating these responsive, targeted email lists?

Well, there are two ways:

• Organic Marketing
• Paid Advertising 

Organic Marketing 

Many people shy away from organic marketing because they feel it’s a slow process. And that is not necessarily true. 

It may be slower compared to paid advertising but slower isn’t necessarily slow. For example, a bullet train is faster than a Bugatti but a Buggati is still very fast. 

And it is the same with organic marketing. Organic marketing is sometimes called attraction marketing as well. This is because, when done right, clients and business prospects come chasing you. 

It also firmly establishes you as an authority in your niche and gets people to know, like, and trust you. 

Thanks to that, people will know exactly who they are dealing with and what to expect when signing up to your lists. This can only lead to them being more receptive and responsive to your campaigns. 

Also, there are many marketing channels where you can generate organic leads. These include social media and YouTube. 

Organic marketing through Facebook has become popular in recent years. Especially amongst online coaches and consultants. 

Marketing on Pinterest is now a common theme amongst bloggers. And eCommerce brands seem to thrive on Instagram traffic. 

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising has been around for a long time and is a quick-fire way to jump-start your business. If you have a sustainable budget, this might be a viable option for you. 

Advertising platforms make it super easy to target your ideal customers. These platforms include Facebook, YouTube, Google, and Bing. From there, you can use a high converting optin page to funnel leads into your email lists. 

There are two (2) things to hold in mind when it comes to paid adverts. 

• There is a lot of competition. 

Paid advertisements can bring you instant results in high volumes. As such, everyone and their cat is now an advertiser. 

And ad platforms tend to give preference to big money spenders. So, without a budget in excess of $1000 to start, it will be hard for you to compete. 

• Your leads won’t know you. 

These potential customers may opt into your lists to access your offers. But they do not know, like or, or trust you yet.  And people do business with people they know,  like, and trust. 

So you’ll have to introduce yourself to your audience through a series of warm-up emails. Only then will you really start seeing results.

Both paid and organic methods can help you create super target email lists. Both have their perks but should be used interchangeably when possible. 

Conclusion 

Email targeting is the holy grail of email marketing. Even a tiny list can produce better results than a large one if relevant content is sent to a targeted audience. And these benefits cannot be understated. 

The fact is if you are not sending targeted emails to your subscribers you are doing them and yourself a disservice. 

It’s a good idea to take some time to rework your marketing strategy. Think about how you can better segment your lists. And if you have not begun automating your email campaigns yet, now is the time to start.

Of course, you’ll need a reliable, affordable, and feature-rich autoresponder to bring this all together. And if we had to recommend a few to you, Mailvio would come at the top of the list since it meets all three criteria.

Now, this concludes our lesson on targeted email marketing but before you sign off…

We’d love to know what your biggest challenge in email marketing is at the moment. Comment below we’ll try to make an article address your specific concern. 

Thank you.