How To Use Your Customer Data to Launch Email Campaigns That Will Convert

The way customers behave and interact with your brand leaves a trail of breadcrumbs that you can leverage, to inform your email marketing strategy. These bits of information say something about your customers. For example, you can learn more about their needs, challenges, motivations, preferences, purchase history, etc. If you’re not using your customer data then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. A survey by Econsultancy and Adobe has shown that 65% of companies rely on customer data to improve the quality of their customer experience.

In this article, we’ll review the 4 types of customer data that you can track. You’ll also learn how you can leverage them to provide a better customer experience and build automated email campaigns that convert.

Ready?

Let's get to it!

Table of contents

1. What is customer data?
2. The 4 types of customer data
3. How to use  customer data to build high converting automated email campaigns
4. Moving forward with data‌‌

‌

What is customer data?

Customer data is the information you have about your customers. You can collect this data from multiple touchpoints such as mobile applications, web apps, websites, surveys, customer interviews, social media, marketing campaigns etc.

The 4 types of customer data‌

1 . Personal data

Personal data has to do with your customer's identity. Think customer name, contact information, email address, login details and demographic information. It is what forms the basis of your customer persona.

When you collect enough personal customer data, you can use it to improve your email marketing campaigns. For example, you can analyse the data across different organization records and build customer segments. This way, you can create more personalized emails, addressing your customer by name including relevant content.

2. Engagement data

Engagement data informs you about how your customers interact with your business via various marketing channels. For example, you can learn how customers engage with your social media pages, paid ads, emails, mobile apps, website and customer service. Here is a more detailed breakdown of each touchpoint:

• Social media: number of post shares/likes, comments and video views.
• Paid ads: click-through rate, cost per click and conversions.
• Website/mobile app: most viewed web page, time spent on a page, bounce rate and traffic sources.
• Customer service: customer ticket, customer complaints/queries and feedback.
• Emails: open rates, click-through rates and conversion rate. ‌‌

3. Behavioural data

Behavioural data throws light on the way customers interact with your product or service. It includes:

• Transactional data: cart abandonment data, customer subscription information, average customer lifetime value and purchase history.
• Product usage: task completion, upgrades, downgrades, feature usage, user license addition, free trial sign-ups and type of device.

This type of customer data can be powerful when used right. If you're a software-service based company, you'll probably have customers subscribe to use your software. Why don't you use this customer data to upsell some product features?

If you're an e-commerce business, you can receive cart abandonment data to learn why a customer didn't complete a purchase. ‌‌

4. Attitudinal data

The final type of customer data is the attitudinal data. As the name implies, it has to do with customer attitude and what motivates them - Why do they choose your brand over other competitors?

This data throws light on your customers' preferences, opinions, and attitudes. With attitudinal data, you can add more depth to your customer persona and make your emails more engaging. There are many sources to collect this data. For example, customer interviews, surveys, feedback from customer service and online reviews.

A problem with attitudinal data is that it comes with its own limitations. While customers may express their thoughts and opinions in different forms, it can be hard to assess and quantify. Why? Because no two people talk the same way. For this reason, you need to ask the right question the right way, to obtain high-quality data.

How to use customer data to build high converting automated email campaigns‌

How do you use these data to build automated email campaigns that will convert? There are 6 strategies we can implement.

1 . Focus on your customer persona

To make your email campaigns more data-driven, you need to build detailed customer personas. A customer persona is a fictional representation of segments within your target audience. However, this goes beyond job description, name and location. A detailed customer persona describes your customer’s needs, challenges, and motivations. You can obtain this information through qualitative research like:

• customer surveys,
• phone and person interviews,
• web and exit surveys.

Here’s an example:

The goal is to get into the minds of your customers, and not build a persona based on guesswork.

With high-quality customer data, you can build a customer persona that will positively influence your email campaigns. This is what ensures that you send emails that are relevant and specific to your customers’ needs.‌‌

2.  Consider your customers’ social behaviour

When it comes to social media, customers tend to have different behaviours and needs. Your customer data informs you about this information when building email campaigns. For example, you can use the data to figure out what appeals to users across various touchpoints. Data like the number of clicks on an ad, click-through rates and conversion rates helps you understand what customers are interested in. ‌‌

3. Build segmented lists

This strategy wouldn’t be complete without customer segmentation. Why? Because sending random email blasts to just any customer has never proven to be effective. ‌‌With customer segments, you can target different touchpoints in the customer journey and deliver a more personalized email campaign. You can choose the particular customer you want to send an email to based on demographics, purchase history, preferences etc.

Here’s an example of geographical segmentation:

If you're sending a welcome email campaign, you can send emails to customers who just signed up for your mailing list. Or if you’re running an upsell campaign, you can send emails to customers who haven’t purchased a particular product.

Your email marketing software should be able to segment your customer base using your chosen criteria. ‌‌

4. Create relevant email content

Creating an email copy is usually one of the most challenging parts for marketers. If your email can’t capture your customer’s interest, then it’ll be hard to reach your conversion goals. Starting from your email subject line, copy, and CTA, you need to ensure that your customers feel like your email is written specifically for them. Remember the customer persona we mentioned earlier? Begin by understanding your customer persona.  As a result, you can deliver emails that include:

• Personalized subject lines
• Targeted CTAs
• First name personalization‌‌

You can add a touch of personalization by sending emails on special occasions like customer work anniversaries, birthdays, or important company milestones. ‌‌

5. Engage customers at the right time

Even if you create the most personalized email and targeted CTA, it won’t matter if your emails are not delivered at the right time. You need to figure out the times that generate the most engagement and conversions for your email campaigns. Use customer data to gain an insight into the send-time data. For example, you can figure out the best time to send your email campaigns by sending out emails at different times of the day.

(Note: your result should be completely based on your own data, relying on other data may not work for your customer base). ‌‌

6. Keep your database updated and leverage automation

There’s nothing worse than sending emails to the wrong people. Your brand will appear unprofessional and careless. For this reason, you need to keep your database updated. You can combine in-house and external databases to improve your email deliverability and reduce low click-through rates.

Remember, if you want to derive maximum results from your email marketing campaigns then leverage automation. With automation, you can use customer data at an optimum level and increase your conversion rates.

Moving forward with data

It’s without a doubt that high-quality customer data can help your email marketing campaigns be more successful. It's no longer effective to send random email blasts to just any customer.

When you understand the 4 types of customer data, you can use the insights to build a high-converting automated email campaign. Remember to focus on building detailed customer personas and segments because it forms the basis for delivering personalized email campaigns.

While the entire process may seem like a lot of work, it actually is. But think about it this way, with high-quality customer data, you can save time, increase conversion rates and deliver emails that meet your customers' demands. ‌‌So, it's safe to say that the effort is worth it. ‌‌

At Engage, with segments, you get to send better, personalized messages that drive more conversions. Nothing hurts retention more than mismatched targeting. To learn more about customer segmentation, check out the customer segmentation docs.