Imagine handing over
a candy lollypop to a 40 something investment banker and fine scotch
to a nine-year-old school student, well it does not fulfill any
of their needs and reflects sheer absurdity.
The same applies to email
marketing, the cardinal rule of any marketing campaign is identification
and profiling the target audience, that will generate maximum responses
leading to the sacred 'higher ROI'.
Many email
marketing campaigns perform miserably yielding very poor results,
on close scrutiny most of the times the fault lies in lack of audience
profiling and thereby communicating with an audience, which has
absolutely no interest in the marketed product or service.
Lets quickly understand the process of audience profiling, the first
step towards successful e-mail campaign. |
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Most database collection points like web sites persuade
users to give away their information for varied parameters.
Now this information may be interesting, relevant, average
and some completely irrelevant, do not ignore any of
this information for if you dig deeper, you will realize
you are sitting on a treasure trove. |
Even the most irrelevant information can provide valuable
insights into consumers’ behavior. Study the consumer
by applying different permutations and combinations
of information fields. For example Have most of the
users previous loans were for a duration of 2 years
and have taken long vacation in that period or intend
to take one in future, then use this study to offer
them loan for 2years duration linked with a holiday
package. |
Try to gauge what your database is thinking. Are they
inclined towards a particular hobby or entertainment? |
Every little bit of information is vital, study it carefully
and you might have a fresh insight into consumer behavior.
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Now that
you have broadly scrutinized all the information available,
lets turn our attention to some of the fields that are
widely used to segment audiences. |
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Zip codes and address fields for location based profiling.
Identify if your product or service is available, where
your audience is located. Will they have easy access
to your product or service? Is your product relevant
to the geographical climate of the database? Ask questions,
review advantages and disadvantages of location and
only then include the database in your marketing campaign,
for generating desire and not fulfilling it will do
more harm. |
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Annual/Monthly Income will tell you if the database
has enough purchasing power to afford your product or
service. Can they afford repeat purchases and cultivate
into loyal consumers. Income reveals a lot about the
appeal your product or service holds for the audience’. |
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Age, sex and education will quickly reveal if your e-mail
will strike a chord with the database. Are they educated
and eligible to access the Internet, if your offering
is gender specific then is the database relevant? These
fields will help you cease wastage and inch you closer
to optimum targeting. |
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Once you have profiled the target audience, its time
to weed out the ones that don’t fit in. Many software
applications will filter and query your database according
to preferred parameters, but before you run the database
through any of these software’s you must be clear
with your profiling criteria. Check, re-check. Think. |
One of the ways is to draw a simple chart chalking out
all the fields of the database, even the ones you have
choose to omit. Correspondingly, list down the preferred
criteria for each field. For the omitted fields, mark
their criteria as X or NA. |
Let us look at how
the above-mentioned chart would look like for a record
company targeting the youth market
| FIELDS |
Age |
Zip
code |
School/College |
Sex |
Hobbies
/ Interests |
| CRITERIA |
Greater then
14, less then 22 |
1105, 1108,
4132, 2135 |
x |
x |
Music |
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Here
the marketer has profiled the target audience as somebody
who is in the 14-22-age bracket, lives in locations
with 1105, 1108, 4132 and 2135 zip codes. The audience
should also have an interest in Music, though it does
not matter whether they are Male/female or which school/college
do they attend. |
The
chart helps you clearly filter the desired audience
profile and even aids the technical team if they are
going to query the database before sending your newsletter.
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Follow
these processes, profile your audience and you will
have an audience that is more then willing to listen
to you. |
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| In our next issue we will
look at, how to personalize your newsletter making you more
intimate with your consumer. |
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