Data is often used to deliver highly effective personalized email campaigns. Personalized emails increase click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%, according to Aberdeen. With results like these, it’s hard not to want to test, segment, and personalize email campaigns. However, the success of these incremental email marketing improvements depends on what customers do next. Sending them to a landing page or inviting them to take advantage of a personalized offer on-site isn’t enough.
You can increase the impact of your targeting by looking at it from the perspective of your web or mobile experience. It pays off. Steelhouse claims that proper targeting and testing can increase conversion rates by up to 300 percent.
Breaking down the Obstacles
Closing the data loop and merging email marketing and website optimization is becoming more common. Marketers are adopting this strategy as data on mobile open rates emerges and digital teams unite. But without a mobile-optimized, personalized experience, any brand investing heavily in email marketing will soon be wasting money. According to Eisenberg Holdings, companies spend $92 to attract customers but only $1 to convert them. Invest in a strategy that combines email marketing data with on-site behavior for a comprehensive approach to optimization.
According to EConsultancy, 64% of companies want to improve personalization, 64% marketing automation, and 62% segmentation. To keep your communications relevant and your audience engaged, combine these three key areas. Here are four ways your website optimization strategy can help your email marketing efforts! Let’s begin.
1. Verify email segmentation with website data
Email marketing segmentation is a common practice. However, segmenting your website traffic is often seen as mutually exclusive.
Using a URL parameter, validate predefined segments for email marketing campaigns. This way, you can see if your segments behave as expected, with metrics that track their behavior from first click to exit.
2. Map Email Engagement and CRM
With the right tools, you can associate a visitor’s unique identifier with a CRM file.
The data-driven marketer (you!) could personalize an email campaign’s URL. You can also use the unique URL to match individuals to segments or visitor groups in the CRM file.
3. Better On-Site Experience with Email Marketing Attributes
Email and website data can interact in both directions. One major travel brand used Maxymiser, a website and app optimization solution, to create an email campaign that drove users to the site by highlighting a destination that matched their preferences (either collected or expressed.) Using Maxymiser’s optimization solution, the brand chose 36 destinations to test.
Segment visitors who arrived via email and determine which predictive attributes will enhance their visit. Like the brand in the example above, you can use email campaign attributes to test and target on your site.
4. Test and Target from Email to Landing Page (Mobile or Desktop)
You can test custom content on predefined email segments by redirecting them to a specific landing page.
Combine email and landing page testing for a holistic view of your users’ behavior. This could be a fun test to run on a mobile landing page.
In Q1 2014, iPhones opened 38% more email than all desktops combined (34 percent). These percentages have undoubtedly risen in the last year. So, to convert a visitor via email, you must optimize your mobile landing pages. For example, Maxymiser can run the desktop landing page test on mobile. By segmenting email audiences and testing the optimal experience on desktop or mobile, a unified optimization and email marketing team could easily generate a rich tapestry of insights.
Plan for success by aligning your strategy with a multi-channel approach like the one described above. The marriage of email marketing and website optimization is an important step towards becoming a holistic digital marketing organization.