If you’re looking for a reliably profitable marketing channel, email is the place to start. A recent study found that every generation—from Baby Boomers to Gen Z—prefer to communicate with brands over email. Acquisition email connects you to prospective customers in the channel they check every day.
And yet, marketers sometimes think that acquisition email is only a stand alone effort. According to our survey, a surprising 39% of marketers who are using acquisition email are employing it as a tactic that exists on its own island vs. an integrated piece of a larger campaign that includes display, social media, paid search and other channels. The other 61% are on to something by combining it with other channels. For acquisition programs to be effective, marketers need to have a holistic understanding of how each channel works together, and how a campaign can use each channel to enhance the other.
Effective acquisition email campaigns start by using data on your current customers to predict and find prospective customers. Let’s say you’re rolling out a new cyber security feature and in addition to connecting with current customers, you want to bring new ones in. A unified business and consumer profile gives marketers a clear understanding of their customer’s identity from their work life, their job title and company, to their personal life—are they married, do they have kids, are they sports fans. This unique look at your customers can provide an insight-informed, data-driven “single-customer view.” What do the people who currently use your cyber security have in common? We want to know the nitty gritty details on your current customers.
When you have this unified profile on your current customers, you can then start creating your ideal customer list. Identity resolution allows you to connect with prospective customers no matter where they are, even if they are using a desktop at work, a cell phone at home and a personal laptop in their home office. Solid identity resolution allows you to know who you are targeting and where to find them.
This is especially important for omnichannel efforts. For example, if you send an acquisition email to your ideal audience talking about a new cyber security feature, then you put a CTV ad in front of that audience later that evening, you have an opportunity for the two messages to work together. You can also connect with multiple people in the household for added reach.
When targeting not just an individual, but a company, it’s important to look at it through a buying group lens. Do you know who weighs in on purchasing decisions in a company? Chances are, if the company is thinking about upgrading all of its company’s computers, it’s not just one person. There may be a committee or many people vetting various options before the main decision makers finalize their purchase. B2B marketers and sales teams need to be able to identify and target the entire buying committee.
At the same time, it’s a huge mistake to serve the same basic content to the CMO in the buying group as you do to the IT manager. In fact, not speaking appropriately to a given stakeholder could cause the company as a whole to disengage and cost you the sale. You want to send your emails to many people in the company and connect with them at the right level.
Data Axle’s B2C Link is one of our proprietary specialty databases. It allows you to target the same person at home and at work by linking customers’ consumer and business profiles together. With B2C link, your custom audiences can target and approach stakeholders at each level based on what they like, where they live, what their buying and browsing habits are, and more. With your omnichannel strategy, your acquisition email isn’t alone. It sits side by side with your other acquisition tactics whether it’s retargeting, direct mail or CTV. In this way you can approach each member of the buying committee individually so that together, as a whole, they’ll decide on your product.
When Honeywell wanted to create a new Black Friday campaign, they used social media, email, and retargeted sponsored posts to connect with their customers in really cool ways. While they didn’t specifically use acquisition email in this campaign, they used their depth of knowledge on their audience to help guide their acquisition strategy—which included a robust email component. Their email revealed Black Friday deals based on a countdown clock, and were geo-targeted to provide customers with the location of their closest store. They connected with prospective customers by generating interest towards a specific event that Honeywell knew their current customers were also interested in: Black Friday. Choosing the right channels was a key part of their strategy. Utilizing email and social media allowed them to have interactive elements like a countdown clock that something like direct mail would have not been able to do as well.
When Honeywell spun off a portion of its company into the new division Resideo, focused on smart thermostats and technology, they shifted their previous B2B marketing strategy of connecting with contractors to marketing directly to homeowners. Data Axle analyzed Resideo’s consumers and found that people were ready to upgrade their thermostat quicker than the brand originally thought. This allowed Resideo marketers to redirect their efforts and reach consumers when they were most engaged and ready to purchase.
Analyzing current customers gave Resideo insight into prospective customers, and it changed the game.
Whether you’re doing brand awareness, selling specific cyber security products, connecting with a whole company or with individual consumers, you won’t know if your strategy has been successful without testing.
For instance, with split testing, Data Axle’s team would use two different subject lines and see which email was opened more often. Maybe the copy could change, or the call to action. When the results of the test come back, it will be clear which image, CTA, copy or headline works better for your intended audience. You can’t assume what they’ll like–you have to test.
You can also collect data on the success of your campaign with engagement rates, click through rates, delivery and open rates. Data Axle uses matchback analysis, which connects customers who converted to acquisition emails they saw earlier in their customer journey. This way we can show you precisely how effective your emails were to your ROI.
Acquisition email can be really successful, even more so when it’s one of several strategically picked channels all working together to connect with the people who are ready to hear from you. It’s targeted precisely to people who are interested in what you provide, and are eligible to receive permission-based emails. With clean, compliant data, your acquisition email campaign can give your acquisition efforts the boost they need to meet your KPIs and goals.
With Data Axle’s deep and wide sets of quality and up to date data to drive each campaign, our acquisition email strategists can help you target the right audience and connect with them in meaningful ways.
As Content Marketing Manager, Natasia is responsible for helping strategize, produce and execute Data Axle's content. With a passion for writing and an enthusiasm for data management and technology, Natasia creates content that is designed to deliver nuggets of wisdom to help brands and individuals elevate their data governance policies. A native New Yorker, when Natasia is not at work she can be found enjoying New York’s food scene, at one of NYC’s many museums, or at one of the city’s many parks with her two teacup yorkies.