Email Marketing: Customers Want to be Treated as Individuals

DIY Sprocket Solutions

Email marketing campaigns constantly run the risk of being redirected straight to the spam folder. Just as often, recipients will follow the steps to unsubscribe to messages that they don’t see value in and that they view as junk. The truth is –no one wants to be sold to. In addition, people want to be treated as an individual. Email marketing runs in dangerous territory as the majority of campaigns are selling hard and marketing to the masses instead of tailoring an experience to the individual.

There are a few ways that you can make your customers and readers feel like individuals:

1. Specialized Lists: Not every customer is going to fall into the same category. You may have specific products or services that work for one customer that won’t be useful to another. Gathering information about your customers is a great way to be able to further tailor your email marketing to actually meet their individual needs. One size does not fit all.
2. Follow Up: Follow up on customers’ questions or concerns. Blindly marketing to a reader who has questions and concerns is insensitive and shows a lack of individual care. If there’s a customer who’s been emailing you for a week about an issue with their order, and you’re continuing to try to sell them through email marketing on your latest products, you look like you’re not paying attention at all to them as an individual.
3. Create Specialized Content: You should be creating content that is tailored to the individual. You should be tapering down your “specialized lists” of customers even further with segmented customer groups. You should be personalizing and segmenting within each group to find the interests and needs of each small sub group. Next, create your content to meet these needs. You’re not just selling blindly to the mass of “customer”. You are matching products and services with each customer and reader on your list. 

There is some very interesting information on developing a less automated and more human approach in this opinion piece in The Drum by Martha Hiefield:

Not surprisingly, there’s a call for brands to be less automated and more human in 2018. Much of the talk is about what brands can do: Put on a human face and reach out with real emotion […] It’s through listening that we are able to appropriately and delightfully respond to cues our audience gives us. As customers engage with brands digitally, they give a much more subtle and valuable range of signals that tell us who they are, how they’re feeling, and what they expect in the next interaction with a brand.

Email marketing continues to be an invaluable tool to marketers and businesses. The bridge to gap is that this tool can only remain effective as long as the people on the receiving end are still willing to listen to the message. An individualized human approach is key.

What are your thoughts on email marketing and treating the reader as an individual? How important is this? Comment below!

Breanne BannonBreanne Bannon

Breanne is a Content Writer, Social Media Marketeer, and Sales Associate for Sprocket Websites.

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