Brands are sitting on a wealth of information that can improve the results of their marketing campaigns. By analyzing first-party data, brands can identify key metrics to guide strategy that will optimize customers’ responses across all marketing channels.

To illustrate the findings that can be discovered from primary data, l will highlight several case studies as well as two years worth of email activity from two brands. I will refer to these brands as dessert, a gift and gourmet food retailer, and outdoor, an outdoor sports apparel and equipment retailer. Through their experiences, you’ll gain a better understanding of how to use primary data to improve welcome emails, subject lines and more.

Welcome email series

When a customer signs up for a brand’s email list, the welcome email series are the first emails that a subscriber receives. Rather than waiting to send these emails, brands should be swift to act. From our data, we uncovered brands who send welcome emails immediately are likely to see increases in open rates by 78 percent. With that small change, double click rates, transaction rates and revenue per mail are expected to be 12 times higher than sending welcome emails in bulk.

To ensure a successful welcome email series, pay close attention to subscribers that don’t receive a welcome email within the first day. Take the dessert brand, for example. They uncovered that it took 14 days for 20 percent of their new subscribers to get their first email. This missed opportunity can be fixed by creating a welcome series that starts with a triggered email deploying immediately after sign-up highlighting all of the benefits of your brand to your newest subscribers.

Growing the number of email subscribers

While the welcome email series is important, its success is closely connected to acquisition programs. If you’re considering incorporating new subscribers into existing programs, be sure to take into account regional and seasonal differences. Recently, we worked with a brand that experienced a fluctuating subscriber list size and its current acquisition tactics had minimal success in attracting new subscribers. To solve this problem, the brand analyzed their primary data to help identify new tactics. Through the analysis, they launched website pop-up overlays and a new segmentation strategy to increase email subscribers. As a result, the brand saw its mailable subscriber list increase by 20 percent.

Comparing subject lines to open rates

Understanding what subject lines work and don’t work can take time. However, taking the time to analyze your emails can provide the boost that your brand needs to encourage customers to finalize transactions. Before analyzing your subject lines, be sure that you understand the key elements to improving open rates. These include:

  • Timing of messages
  • Subject line content and style
  • Targeting and segmentation

Once you understand the key elements, you can better identify patterns of content that encourage email opens. Consider the two brands that we mentioned earlier, outdoor and dessert. At 17 days, the outdoor brand saw a huge drop-off in open rates. If you’re in a similar situation, consider sending a VIP offer to new subscribers around the day you’re experiencing a significant drop-off. On the other hand, the dessert brand experienced a huge drop off at 32 days, providing an opportunity for the brand to send a special surprise email one month after sign-up.

Open rates for welcome emails are often more than double those of promotional campaigns. If you take the time to analyze your welcome series and see when customers tend to drop off you will be able to find opportunities to supply offers that can boost transaction rates. In fact, brands that send offers in the third or fourth mailing often see a boost in transaction rates by more than 26 percent.

Email upsells

If you are struggling to encourage multiple purchases, consider transactional emails. Transactional email types have higher performance metrics than promotional emails. To achieve success with these emails, use dynamic content personalization and offer relevant products to each customer, highlight campaigns for related products and provide offers that dynamically relate to the previous customer open, click or transaction history. When you incorporate these tactics, you’ll see an improvement in your metrics and purchases.

Source: Cheetah Digital

Segmentation

Simply basing segmentation on geographic and demographic profiles is not enough. Consider other segmentation options like:

  • Behavioral/lifecycle data: obtained from emails/website
  • Purchase data: frequency, recency, channel, category
  • Customer engagement modeling
  • Customer value segmentation modeling: spend behavior combined with demographics

Trigger Email Campaigns

Another way to utilize primary data is by automatically generating emails based on the subscribers’ behavior and activities. Examples of this include sending abandon cart emails to online shoppers and visitors to take advantage of their interest when your brand is fresh on their mind. By examining this activity, you have the opportunity to send a series of emails to maximize revenue. Be sure to test the timing that works best for your brand, but keep in mind that these series of emails are typically sent within one week of the activity.

Source: Cheetah Digital

Every brand has its own story to tell. The recommendations provided above are only a few of the opportunities that primary data can uncover. Take time to analyze and uncover findings in primary data. This will help identify what questions you need to address and what program enhancements you can make to optimize responses and drive results.

About the Author: Judd Marcello is the EVP of Global Marketing at Cheetah Digital . Marcello oversees a global team that is responsible for all aspects of the brand, demand generation, digital marketing, corporate communications, and sales development. A marketer at heart, Judd has more than 20 years’ experience delivering high-impact B2C and B2B marketing leadership in the software, consumer packaged goods, consumer electronics, and food and beverage industries across the United Kingdom, Americas, Australian, and European markets. Prior to joining Cheetah Digital, he held senior marketing roles at several companies, including Canon, Salesforce, ExactTarget, and Smartling.