Data

Customer insight: who is subscriber@yourmailinglist.com?

Illustration of friends

Pick a subscriber from your mailing list. Any subscriber. What do you know about that person? If the answer is their email address, then it’s time to embark on some customer insight.

It’s common knowledge that personalisation makes for better marketing, and it’s common sense that good data makes that possible. But how can you go about learning more about an existing subscriber?

Tracking

Your email platform may come equipped with a link-tagging function. Add categories such a brands or product types to your links, and you instantly have a convenient new source of customer data.

No such functionality in your ESP? No worries. Third party tracking platforms like Google Analytics can provide deep insight into your subscriber’s behaviour both within your email and on your website.

Preference centres

There’s a simple way to find out more about a person: ask. A preference centre is an online form that lets your customers pick and choose what kind of content to receive. Give your subscribers the power to customise your emails.

Example preference centre

Don’t go to the trouble of creating a preference centre only to bury a link to it in your footer’s small print. It’s worth shouting about.

Surveys

Email marketing often feels very one-way. A survey can help to rebalance the situation. It has multiple benefits. A survey shows that you value your customers’ thoughts, provides an engaging form of content to add some variety to your emails, and lets you harvest useful data for your future marketing campaigns. Win win win.

Split testing

An well-planned A/B testing programme can yield significant insight into your customers’ interests. The emphasis is on programme. Ditch the hasty, ad-hoc A/B tests and instead implement them as an ongoing strategy. It takes some patience, but the payoff is worth the effort.

Product recommendation services

One-to-one content is the holy grail of personalisation. Platforms that integrate with your website can gather individual behavioural data and generate relevant product suggestions accordingly. Sit back while the algorithm does the hard work in the background.

AI

Artificial intelligence is already a part of the marketing world, and its role will only continue to expand. Let’s see where machine-learning and content-generation goes in the coming years.

The more you know

You don’t need to know every want and need of every customer right now. Every little bit of customer insight is powerful, and mutually beneficial. When your customer sees content to their liking, you’ll also see something to your liking: stronger mailing reports.