If this doesn’t describe your business’s experience with email marketing, you may be leaving money on the table. When done right, email marketing puts the right information in front of the right people at the right time, leading to high returns. The key is to parse, or segment, your mailing lists strategically. This will help you deliver the kind of value that gets people to open your messages.

Create Targeted Email Campaigns Through Segmentation

To begin to understand the value of segmentation, think about the kinds of emails you open right away. These probably come from friends, business associates, favorite companies or respected organizations. If you receive dozens of emails every day, you likely scan the subject lines first to see which ones immediately connect with you.

Marketers understand that people are more likely to open and act on messages that they find personally valuable and timely. Email list segmentation refers to dividing your list of contacts into smaller groups based on certain criteria. Ideally, these segmentation criteria will help you develop different email campaigns for different groups. Each campaign should be highly relevant to its target audience and should encourage readers to take specific actions.

Sample Segmentation Tactics

The Direct Marketing Association reports that 58 percent of all revenue is driven by segmented emails. Very simple segmentation can occur when a retailer divides a list of contacts by age, location, or gender. As you learn more about your prospects or customers, you can use this additional data for more advanced segmentation.

Say a shoe retailer wants to send a welcome email to everyone who has signed up for their mailing list. They could send one email to all of their contacts and feature many types of shoes in this message. But to increase the likelihood of recipients making a purchase, they could divide their mailing list by gender: men get promotions about men’s shoes and women get promotions about women’s shoes. They could also consider where their prospective customers are located. For instance, shoppers in Boston are probably more likely to purchase winter boots than shoppers in El Paso.

Once a prospect becomes a customer, marketers can develop more targeted campaigns based on past behavior. For example, when a person signs up for a shoe retailer’s mailing list, the retailer has no idea who that person needs to buy shoes for. But if the person purchases a pair of children’s shoes, it’s safe to assume they’ll need to buy more shoes as their child grows. Thus, the retailer could email the customer about sales on children’s shoes as well as adults’ shoes.

Creative Segmentation Ideas for Email Marketing

Demographics and purchasing behavior are certainly common and effective criteria for creating mailing lists — but they’re not the only options.

For businesses using a customer relationship management system, the possibilities for mailing list segmentation are endless. Your CRM already contains a wealth of customer data, from preferences to past interactions. By using this data to filter your customers, you can create highly targeted and personalized mailing lists. And if your CRM integrates directly with an email campaign tool like Mailchimp, you can add extra value to your email marketing without extra manual effort.

If you’re looking for new ways to use your customer data for email marketing, here are five strategies to consider. Use them independently, or combine multiple tactics at once for advanced segmentation.

Interest Level

Are you sending the same follow-up email to everyone on your list, regardless of how they treated your first email? There’s a big difference between recipients who clicked through but didn’t make a purchase and those who never opened the email at all.

Try dividing your contact list based on previous level of engagement, then craft separate follow-up messages for these groups. For those who didn’t open the first email, you may want to try the same message with a more engaging subject line. Meanwhile, you might send a follow-up survey to those who did open the first email to assess why they lost interest.

Content Preferences

If you’re in the habit of sending digital content via email, aim to curate your selections based on customer preferences. These days, many marketers have found that videos tend to generate more clicks. Still, some people might prefer text articles because they want to read at their own pace or they have a hard time loading videos on their phones.

Take note of which recipients tend to open which types of content. You could also send a survey to your customer base to ask which content formats and topics they prefer. If you track this data in your CRM and segment your email lists accordingly, you’re bound to fuel more interest in your messages.

Changes in Behavior

Think back to the online shoe retailer. Perhaps some of their customers buy new boots every fall — so what does it mean if those customers don’t return this year? Have they bought boots from a competitor? Have they moved to a snow-free city?

Keep an eye out for customers who have stopped purchasing as regularly as they used to. A customer’s failure to make a scheduled purchase doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve lost them, but it does mean that your business is no longer top of mind. Consider sending personalized reminders or special promotions to this group to try and reconnect with them. Offering an exclusive loyalty program can also be a great way to generate new engagement.

Sales Pipeline Stage

Some companies track prospective customers based on what stage they’re at in the sales pipeline. Examples of such stages might include prospecting, qualification, and negotiation.

When planning your marketing campaigns, it’s wise to use your sales pipeline stages as segmentation criteria. This is because your prospective customers will have different questions and concerns at different points in the buying process. By keeping your email content relevant to each pipeline stage, you won’t risk boring your audience with information they already know or overwhelming them with details they aren’t ready for.

Satisfaction Level

Hopefully, you have methods in place to collect customer feedback and monitor satisfaction. This is valuable data that can help to inform both the content and tone of your email messaging. After all, you don’t want to send obliviously upbeat messages to customers who have just left you negative reviews.

If you’re tracking satisfaction scores in your CRM, use these numbers to segment your customer list and develop appropriate email campaigns. For instance, happy customers could be courted for reviews or a referral program. Dissatisfied customers, on the other hand, will require a more delicate outreach. You may want to seek their feedback, apologize for their frustrations, offer an incentive to return — or all of the above.

Make the Most of Your Email Campaigns

If you want people to open your emails, you need to make sure those emails are worth opening. Segmenting your mailing lists based on key criteria helps you keep your messages timely and relevant to the recipients. By leveraging the customer data available to you, you can create targeted email campaigns that truly benefit your customers as well as your business.

The post How to Use Segmentation for Successful Email Marketing appeared first on Method.

In order to generate repeat business through email marketing, you need to write emails your customers want to read. Luckily, you can make this process easier by leveraging the power of your QuickBooks CRM. Between the wealth of customer data and handy features like email campaigns, your CRM is a valuable tool in your email marketing strategy.

Keep reading for four tips on how to increase customer engagement and drive new sales through email marketing.

1. Personalize your messages

If you’ve ever received an email that started with “Dear Valued Customer,” chances are you didn’t feel valued at all. It’s the email marketing equivalent of buying a picture frame and leaving the stock photo in it — it’s pretty impersonal.

Your CRM contains plenty of valuable data, from customers’ names to their purchase histories. Take advantage of this information to create personalized subject lines and messages that speak directly to each customer. It’s harder to ignore something that feels like it was intended for you, which is why personalized emails have a higher open rate than emails without personalization.

Method CRM users: Use merge fields in your email templates to automatically insert personalized data, like the customer’s name or city, into each message.

2. Address specific audiences

When it comes to email marketing, one size usually doesn’t fit all. If you offer a variety of products or services, you likely have different customer segments with unique characteristics. For instance, a tutoring company may have students ranging in age from elementary school to high school.

To maximize customer engagement, prepare messages that specifically address the needs of different groups. Consider the tutoring company — this could mean sending college prep information to parents of high school students, while promoting after-school activities to parents of younger students.

Considering that segmented emails generate 58% of all revenue, it pays to ensure that your offers are relevant to the recipients!

Method CRM users: Use advanced search to filter your list of email recipients based on location, keyword tags, or other criteria.

3. Inspire action

If you’ve ever purchased furniture from IKEA, you probably recall the overwhelming feeling of opening the box and seeing a million disjointed pieces. Similarly, people can become overwhelmed while skimming dozens of emails in their inboxes.

Make life easier for your customers by writing actionable subject lines that make it clear what to expect from your message. This could mean using action verbs (like “buy” or “save”), announcing a special offer, or even asking a question. The point is to inspire customer engagement by letting customers know what they can do with the email.

For example, compare the subject lines of two emails I recently received from food delivery apps:

I’ll let you guess which one I clicked on immediately. (Hint: It was the one that promised me discounted food.)

Method CRM users: After crafting the perfect action-oriented email, use it as inspiration for future campaigns. Save the email as a custom template and share it with other users in your Method account.

4. Don’t be afraid to experiment

Every business is unique, and so are its customers. To determine what types of emails drive customer engagement for your business, experiment with different strategies and see what succeeds. In email marketing, this is called A/B testing.

The premise is to run two nearly identical versions of an email campaign and compare the performance of each version. The campaigns might differ on variables like subject line, layout, or email send time. Once you learn which factors lead to higher sales, you’ll be able to create more effective campaigns in the future.

Method CRM users: Use Method’s free integration with Mailchimp to improve your email campaign performance. Upload your Method contacts to your Mailchimp account, then set up and manage A/B tests within Mailchimp.

You’ve already done the hard work of acquiring customers — now the goal is to maintain customer engagement. With these tips in mind, you’ll be well-equipped to write effective emails that capture attention and drive repeat business.

If your email marketing strategy still needs a boost, Method CRM is here to help. Sign up for your free trial today!

The post 4 Ways to Increase Customer Engagement Through Email Marketing appeared first on Method.

Between generating leads, creating quotes, fulfilling orders, invoicing customers, and managing employees (if you have them!), it can be hard to find time to eat or sleep.

And some other tasks — like sending email campaigns to existing customers — may fall off your to-do list entirely. When you have limited time to devote to email marketing, your instinct may be to focus on marketing to leads.

However, the cost of acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times higher than the cost of retaining a customer. To maximize the ROI of time spent crafting email campaigns, your best bet is to focus on driving repeat business from your existing customer base.

In this post, we’ll cover three essential email campaigns that keep customers coming back, plus tips on using your QuickBooks-integrated CRM to streamline the process. (As an added bonus: once the repeat business starts rolling in, save time by entering new sales directly in your CRM, rather than opening QuickBooks.)

1. ‘New Offering’ Email Campaigns

When you introduce a new product or service, chances are some of your existing customers will be interested in it. However, your customers are busy people and likely aren’t checking your website daily.

Share the good news by sending an email campaign that highlights key features of the new release. You can even include a special deal to encourage people to try it out.

For instance, when the creators of a VPN service developed a password manager app, they sent existing customers an email inviting them to try the new service for free.

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Method CRM users: There are a million things to do when you’re launching something new, but don’t forget about the email campaign! Create an activity to remind yourself to send the campaign when things calm down.

2. ‘Celebration’ Email Campaigns

For many people, reading emails is a monotonous task — so why not inject a little joy into the process? Special occasions, such as birthdays, are great opportunities to reach out and send customers a small gift, like a discount or free item.

In the example below, Pizza Hut sent customers a limited-time offer to receive free cinnamon sticks with their next order.

Gestures like this will make your customers feel valued and appreciated, which helps build long-term relationships. Plus, birthday emails have a 481% higher transaction rate than other promotional emails, so you’ll also reap the benefits of celebrating.

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Method CRM users: Add a custom field to the customer screen to track birthdays or other important dates. Then, streamline the process of sending celebratory emails by creating a custom template to reuse and share with your team.

3. ‘Personalized Recommendation’ Email Campaigns

When tasked with making a decision, many people turn to friends or family for advice. The logic behind this behaviour is sound.

Your loved ones know your personality and preferences, so they’re more likely to give recommendations that align with your interests.

To generate new business from existing customers, put yourself in the role of an insightful friend. Use demographic and purchase history data to identify other items your customers might like, then send emails highlighting these items.

In the email below, Dollar Shave Club wisely presumes that someone who has ordered razors is interested in personal grooming, so they suggest other shaving products to add to the purchase.

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Method CRM users: Use tags to categorize customers by age, location, purchase history, or other key characteristics. Then, use advanced search to filter by tags and send recommendation emails to targeted subsets of customers.

If you’re ready to build stronger relationships with your existing customers, why not try one of these email campaigns?

With a built-in email campaign tool and a free Mailchimp integration, Method CRM is here to help you generate repeat business. If you’re not yet a subscriber, sign up for your free trial!

The post The Best Email Campaigns to Keep Customers Coming Back appeared first on Method.

Email marketing to leads is a key part of lead management, as it provides an opportunity to educate and nurture prospects as they move through the buying process. Regular communication also ensures that your business is top of mind when a lead is ready to make a purchase.

Not sure where to begin? In this post, we’ll cover three types of lead marketing campaigns, along with great examples from real companies. Get inspired, then leverage Method CRM’s email campaigns feature to start marketing to your leads directly from your QuickBooks-integrated CRM. (Bonus: Once your marketing efforts pay off, leads can be converted to QuickBooks customers in just a few clicks.) 

1. Lead marketing campaign: The teaching moment

First things first — lead marketing campaigns don’t have to be strictly promotional. In fact, when you have newly-acquired leads, bombarding them with “BUY NOW” messaging may turn them off from purchasing from you. Instead, try sending a helpful email that educates on a topic or teaches a skill relevant to your business. Your leads will appreciate receiving valuable content for free, and you’ll position your product or service in their minds as a potential solution to a problem.

In the sample email shown here, Framebridge encourages their leads to click through for helpful content, rather than directly advertising their services. The guide to hanging wall art certainly complements the custom framing offered by the company. However, this resource could still be useful to recipients regardless of whether they want to place an order.

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Method CRM users: In addition to Method’s Email Campaigns features, you can also take advantage of Method’s free integration with Mailchimp.

2. Lead marketing campaign: The Q&A

Often, you may have leads who are intrigued by your offerings, but still have concerns that are holding them back from buying. Don’t wait for these leads to come to you! Compile a list of frequently asked questions about your product or service, along with clear and concise answers. For example, a tutoring company could prepare a list of FAQ’s about rates, subjects, and tutor qualifications. Sending this information directly to your leads will convey that your company is proactive and intuitive. And with any luck, your leads will gain peace of mind that your product or service is right for them.

The sample email below is from Turo, an app that enables people to rent cars from local car owners. Customers frequently ask about insurance on the rental cars, so the company has made sure that this info is available to prospective users of the service.

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Method CRM users: When you write a lead marketing email that you want to use again, save it as a custom email template in Method.

3. Lead marketing campaign: The announcement

Of course, you want to inform your existing customers when you introduce a new product or service. However, it’s also beneficial to share the good news with your leads. For some leads, the new offering may be the missing piece that was holding them back from purchasing. Providing a brief overview of the new features available is a great way to capture a lead’s interest and encourage them to learn more. For example, in the case of a tutoring company that has expanded their subject offerings, they could send an announcement to leads that have expressed interest in certain subjects.

In the sample email shown here, it’s clear that Sprout Social is announcing a new feature called the Facebook Pages Report. Take note of how the message encourages leads in their trial period to log into their accounts. This ensures that leads can assess the new feature before deciding whether to subscribe to the platform.

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Method CRM users: Use tags to categorize leads based on characteristics relevant to your industry. You can then create a segmented lead marketing campaign by using advanced search to filter leads by tags.

If you’re not yet using email marketing to engage with your leads, why not try one of these campaigns? Method CRM provides plenty of options for lead marketing, with built-in email campaigns as well as a free Mailchimp integration. Sign up for a free trial today!

The post 3 Essential Lead Marketing Campaigns to Keep Your Leads Warm appeared first on Method.