post by Ninja James

Have your new subscriptions hit the wall?
Are you churning subscribers at a faster rate than you can acquire them?
Are your open rates decreasing over time?
Are you marketing to a diminishing email list?
Is your average sale price falling?

If you are mass mailing your email list it’s a fairly safe bet that your email communications are solely aligned with your event timeline. This was the only option with traditional media but the game has moved on. Digital not only gives us the opportunity to tailor our communications to the customer, it is now becoming a customer expectation. Fail to meet it, and you’re history with a quick unsubscribe!

Great expectations

Consumer behaviour is changing. Consumers expect email communication to be timely, relevant and valuable. And that's a problem for marketers who still rely on a mass email marketing strategy. How can you hit these 3 expectations by sending one email to everyone on your email list at the same time? Short answer, you can't.

The good news, however, is that according to a MarketingSherpa case study, you can increase your conversion rate by over 200% by switching from a mass marketing approach to a highly optimised segmented approach. Even if a 200% conversion rate improvement sounds a little ambitious, even a modest 1% increase in click-through-rate can improve your conversion rate by 15%. And that can be done by just segmenting your lists. Indeed Mailchimp has tested the Effects of List Segmentation on Email Marketing Stats and the results are impressive:

Open rates

And just look at the improvement in clicks, 58.99% higher with segmentation. This is a key metric when accessing your email activity. The click from an email to your website is the first step of a customer journey that leads to a conversion.

What can be done?

Relevant
You’re probably used to identifying different segments of your audience so that you can offer event experiences that appeal to multiple audience segments. As a consequence, your content strategy follows suit. You already produce content around different audience segments, such as families or mature couples. Now is the time to bring your email communications in-line with this approach. A first step towards this is to segment your list by those audience segments. That way you can tailor your subjects lines and email content to maximise your open and click-through rates.

Timely
After that, there's the customer journey to consider. Can you segment your audience by where they are in the customer journey? This can be tricky, but if you can identify customers who are in the awareness phase, you can deliver content that will make them aware of features that are of particular interest to them.

If you can identify customers who are in the consideration phase, maybe they have previously visited the ticketing section of your website, you can start to target them with personalise offers.

Valuable
Then there are your audience's key drivers. What will make them buy a ticket. This is closely tied-in with the timely bit, but what is valuable changes at different stages of the customer journey. In the awareness phase, useful content is valuable. During the consideration and purchase stages, a personalised and limited time offer will be valuable. After purchase, useful add-ons to enhance their event experience may be valuable with the help of email automation.

The cherry on the cake

By aligning your email communications to the customer, they receive a more rewarding experience. This helps to build value in your product and service. So your potential customers are happier, and more likely to convert.

But the cherry on the cake will be a growth in your average conversion value. Instead of peppering everybody with offers and discounts, you can nurture your audience and then target them when they are most likely to buy. This will help to grow your event’s revenue over time.