So just how do you make your emails “more relevant”?

Talk to any email marketing expert and they’ll tell you your emails need to be more relevant.

No arguments there.

But what does that really mean? And how do you actually do it?

Those two questions are often met with unhelpful answers.

“Relevant! You know…send people stuff that’s relevant to their needs. It’s not rocket science.”

“You just have to segment your customer database based on existing records, prior email interactions and preference center data…then distribute dynamic content and offers…implement trigger emails based on website behavior and product lifecycles…and make sensible use of personalization.”

See your ESP or software provider for details.

Now all that is true. These tactics can deliver great results.

Trouble is a lot of us are just grateful to get that monthly newsletter written or a quick sales promo finished up. We may not have the time, tools or resources to take the technology route to relevancy.

So what can you do?

Here a few ideas to think about…please do suggest your own in the comments.

1. Don’t get hung up on the word relevancy

The term “relevancy” has been reduced to the idea of matching offers to what people want to buy and content topics to what people are likely interested in.

Which sounds good, but brings two problems.

First, it only addresses a few of those “people needs”. Our lives (thank goodness) are not dedicated solely to the acquisition of goods and factual information.

Second, relevancy is not really the goal. It’s not enough, since it says nothing about whether the message has any worth beyond being “on-topic”. You actually want to send emails that offer people some kind of value…that resonate…that drive a response. That’s not the same as being relevant.

So think in terms of sending email that people want to get. The value you offer is the foundation on which everything else is built. And even the prettiest house collapses if the foundations aren’t solid.

As Simms Jenkins notes:

“Compelling content that provides value to your subscribers is the best way to ensure they stay engaged with your e-mail program”

Part of sending “wanted email” is indeed sending “relevant” offers and/or content. But the concept also frees you to think more creatively about what people might enjoy receiving.

The classic example is the idea of emotional value covered in detail in a recent post. Personality, humor, fun, quirkiness, uniqueness, creative design, creative writing, etc. are all ways to actually make your message more relevant/valuable, even if the main offer or content isn’t.

Learn by doing and asking

As we wring our hands and bemoan the missing preference center or database integration capacity (or just a missing database), we forget that subscribers already have a good way to tell us what they want and don’t want.

It’s called a click.

Standard email campaign reports will show you what offers or topics get the most response. For example, I assign the articles featured in my newsletter to a particular topic category and then review the responses each content category gets across past issues.

A word of warning though.

When comparing responses across a set of emails, it’s not just the offer or content topic that might explain different response rates. You need to take a host of other factors into account too, as this article explains.

And you can always ask subscribers what they want to hear/learn about: send them a survey and use the results to guide future content or offer development.

Try the content approach

I used to get emails from a golf ball supplier. Just a long stream of offers on golf balls. Which is fine. Every now and then I’ll want to buy some balls and they give themselves a chance that I’ll buy from them.

These kinds of email programs are solid, but uninspiring…and typical of senders with a limited range of products or services to push. In such circumstances, it’s hard to build email value through offer variety, so why not boost that value with content?

Suppose some of those emails showed me how to choose the right ball for my kind of golf? Or explained the differences between ball types? Or offered tips on ball care?

And since they know a potential golf ball purchaser is probably a golfer, that opens up a whole slew of possibilities for valuable content.

Now the emails have a better chance of getting my attention and the sender has a better chance of getting the sale.

Chocolatier Nicole Leffer sends prospects and customers candy-molding lessons by email. The result?

“The open rates have been very good…and the course has definitely led to new sales (from new customers), as well as improved our relationship with our customers.” (See the case study)

The main constraint to using content to boost email value is the cost (in time or money) of producing that content. But it need not be high.

This article gives the case for marketing through content and outlines six ways to produce this content at little cost. Those stuck for ideas can also draw inspiration here.

Promote through service: transactional and trigger messages

The content approach to lift relevancy reflects the idea of marketing through service.

Helpful content drives responses indirectly by increasing loyalty, awareness etc. And directly, when related promotions are placed within or near that valuable content.

We’ve been trained to think of marketing emails, despite the opt-in, as somehow intrusive…imposing. It’s a direct marketing mindset that partly explains the narrow view of emails as a vehicle to push promotion after promotion after promotion.

Even ignoring the fact that people volunteer to join a list because they want those promotions or content, it can help to switch mindset and see emails as a service, not an imposition or intrusion.

A service mentality opens up new avenues to relevancy.

Transactional emails (like order confirmations) are by definition relevant, since they’re a vital part of a process the recipient is going through.

Trigger emails are also intrinsically relevant as they go out as a direct result of a specified action, like an email reminder if a shopping cart is abandoned.

This built-in relevancy is why many experts see these kinds of messages as a cornerstone of email marketing’s future.

Loren McDonald, for example, has an excellent overview of the potential here. And a recent study found that offers placed within shipping confirmations produced over three times the revenue per email garnered by standard promotional mailings.

Many senders ignore these “service-oriented” messages, because we assume they require sophisticated databases and integration with web analytics to achieve their potential.

Not necessarily.

For example, when people talk about piggy-backing marketing messages in transactional emails, they usually refer to related offers inserted automatically based on the products or services purchased. You bought this…you might like this. Like Amazon and iTunes do.

But you can start simply. You can, for example:

• Turn standardized system messages put together by software engineers into well-written, clear communications.
• Insert a generic offer, promotion, sales message, event announcement, or informational note into the footer or sidebar of each outgoing order confirmation. One you can swap out easily as necessary.
• Get your system to send follow-up emails asking for feedback, a product review or similar.

Sophisticated trigger emails are just the grown up version of the age-old autoresponder. Consider, for example, the lowly welcome message.

That’s a trigger email that all software and ESPs should offer and you should make use of. Consider the numbers for my own newsletter:

• Open rate on welcome messages: over double the rate for a typical newsletter issue
• Click rate on welcome messages: over three times the rate for a typical newsletter issue

For tips on making more of welcome messages, see here.

Piggy-back on the wider world

Relevancy/value is raised where you can draw a meaningful connection to what’s going on elsewhere and right now.

We acknowledge this implicitly with end-of-year holiday emails: a banal offer in February gains meaning when it becomes “a gift for dad” in a message featuring appropriate seasonal imagery.

The concept is easily extended to:

• Other holidays
• Seasons (summer)
• Weather
• Major events (elections, sporting events, TV events, etc.)

It’s not just about finding a promotion that fits, like pushing umbrellas when the country is covered by cloud and rain. It can be as little as drawing a logical connection between the message and the wider world:

• “Stuck indoors with all this rain? Here are some new books to read…”
• “Tired of all those political ads? Bury yourself in a new novel…”
• “Didn’t get the right books under the Christmas tree? Try these recommendations…”

The trick is not to make the connection so contrived that it’s painful: some products really don’t make ideal holiday gifts.

Use secondary calls to action

A big problem with relevancy is that you often only have one shot at it in an email. If you’re sending out a single offer or article, you have to hope it hits the mark. And it usually doesn’t.

Some senders hedge their relevancy bets by cramming the email full of different offers or topics…a shotgun approach that hopes that something somewhere will match the subscriber’s needs or interests.

The danger is that too much information, choice or clutter simply dilutes the message and causes recipients to switch off entirely. Equally, not everyone has a swathe of offers or content to draw on.

A useful compromise is to have an email feature one or two key offers or articles, but include secondary calls to action that might pick up clicks when the main focus is not relevant. Examples include:

• Sidebar/footer links to other promotions or content
• Website links (often in a navigation bar) leading to popular areas of your website
• A link to your website search form

I got a sustainable lift in clicks just by adding links to the  previous issue’s content at the bottom of each new newsletter issue.

Don’t assume you can’t be sophisticated

The introduction to this post featured the kind of targeting tools available to those with deeper pockets than most.

But that’s not entirely fair.

If you assume that your value-priced ESP or off-the-shelf software doesn’t support advanced segmentation and such like, then take another look just to be sure.

Go on…take a fresh look at the manual or help files. You might be surprised at just how easy they make it to send “more relevant emails” with the press of a few buttons.

So, just a few ideas for you…any other suggestions for the time and resource-poor marketer to try?

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• Channel: Email marketing tactics

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