Guide: Using Social Data to Win at Email Marketing

Using Social Data

to Win at Email

Marketing Co-authored by

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Using Social Data to Win at Email Marketing

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First comes the struggle to avoid being flagged as spam.

Shortly after, the fight to stand out among armies of other

emails screaming for attention ensues: “Wedding

announcement!” “Admissions letter!” “Credit card statement!”

And just when you think the clouds of doom have lifted, the

challenge of getting that user to click through your subject line

and open that email rears its daunting, leering head.

Email marketing today exists in

an age of many battles.

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To attract more eyeballs to your email content, your business needs to craft the right messages for the right audiences. This means delivering

email content that’s so relevant to your subscribers’ backgrounds, interests, and lifestyles that

they’re inclined to single it out among the heaps of other messages and actually read it.

So how do businesses attract more readers and consistently deliver email content that’s

valuable and immediately opened? This guide breaks down the different ways that email

marketing done right helps businesses and provides practical tips for marrying social data and

email marketing to establish personal, lasting connections with audiences and encourage

desired user behaviors.

61% of people state that “not being interested in an email” was the most common reason for not opening an email, followed by “getting too many emails” (45%). Source: Chadwick Martin Bailey, 2012





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Better Emails Mean Giving Users a VIP Experience

An effective email marketing strategy centers around three key characteristics—value, intentionality, and

personalization.

VALUE means keeping users’

best interests in mind and

engaging in a mutually beneficial

interaction with them. Email

messages that fail to deliver

value to their recipients are

almost undoubtedly going to end

up in the Trash folder. Knowing

what content will keep your

emails out of the Trash folder for

each subscriber is possible

through analyzing social data.

We’ll discuss this in more detail

later.

INTENTIONAL ITY refers to a

mindset of sending purposeful,

goal-centric emails rather than

bombarding users with a ton of

content that fails to deliver value

and increase engagement. Keep

in mind that your users are

inundated with emails already on

a daily basis. To avoid being a

part of the email clutter, make

sure to only send them emails

with a clearly defined intent

instead of just emailing them for

the sake of being in touch.

PERSONALIZ ATION means

targeting your email efforts to

your audience’s specific interests,

backgrounds, habits, and needs.

The first step to email

personalization is segmenting

your reader base according to

specific actions they’ve taken or

interests that they’ve listed on

their profiles. By adding a layer

of customization to your email

campaigns, you greatly increase

the likelihood of reaching the

right users with the most

relevant messages.

Email Marketing in its Many Forms

Email marketing represents just one part of an entire digital marketing strategy, but crafting the right

message is crucial to achieving your business goals. Below are some examples of commonly deployed email

campaigns and their typical use cases:

Welcome or Confirmation Messages are that first emails that new customers receive upon registering for

an account. These emails can contain that user’s login credentials (if applicable), an initial discount or offer,

and tips for using the site to encourage lasting brand engagement.

Newsletters or Digests communicate information that your users are interested in on a regular basis.

These email blasts can contain content developed in-house, thought leadership from outside sources, or a

combination of both. The overarching intent is to develop a consistent stream of direct communication with

audiences.

Company or Product Announcements keep users updated as your business grows. By informing users of

significant updates, your business promotes transparency and clear communication, which encourage user

trust and loyalty. Plus, you give them the added bonus of receiving exclusive content first in exchange for

subscribing.

Special Offers or Promotions give your subscribers access to exclusive deals. This incentivizes purchasing,

builds loyalty, and drives social sharing. Randomized email offers can build excitement and anticipation

among readers while also encouraging impulse purchases.







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How Does Social Data Tie In?

By now, you might be wondering where social data falls in the discussion of email marketing. To

sum it up, social data is the fuel for impactful email marketing. Email marketing without social

data is simply mass emailing, which hardly differs from spam.

The core of using social data for email

marketing is audience segmentation. By nature,

audiences are fragmented, or unique in their

backgrounds, interests, and friend networks.

Audience segmentation means indexing users’

data to segment them into groups so that you

can target each group with a uniquely tailored

email subject line and message. Segmentation

can be done by analyzing profile information,

behavioral data, or a combination of both. How

you choose to segment your audience is entirely

up to your business’s unique goals.

To provide more context around email segmentation best practices, we’ve included some use

cases below.

“Email marketing

without social data is

simply mass emailing,

which hardly differs

from spam.”





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Dropbox Encourages Users to Complete the Setup Process

When users sign up for an account but fail to complete the product installation process,

Dropbox sends the above email about 20 minutes after the initial registration. This type of

communication is called a triggered email because it is sent after certain triggers, or specified

actions, occur. In this case, the trigger was the user’s failure to finish installing the product.

Notice that Dropbox’s email is personalized, brief, upbeat, and contains an obvious call to

action. It greets the user with his or her first name, carries a tone of excitement, and relays

Dropbox’s value proposition in a couple of sentences.







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NFL.com Celebrates Users’ Birthdays with Personalized Gear and Discounts

NFL.com sends a birthday email to its users with an image of a personalized jersey and a 15%

discount enclosed. By reaching out to its customers with a birthday greeting, NFL.com adds a

personal touch to its email marketing efforts and encourages users to buy more merchandise.

The main purpose of this message—to encourage purchases over NFL.com’s e-commerce site—

is supported by a clear call to action and customized product image.







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LinkedIn Suggests Individually-Tailored Career Opportunities

By default, LinkedIn sends weekly curated emails containing job opportunities based on that

user’s profile. For example, the above email is specifically tailored for a user located in the San

Francisco Bay Area with “Content Marketing Manager” as her primary job title.

LinkedIn’s Jobs email campaign contains multiple clear calls to action organized in a scannable,

succinct format. The obvious goal of these emails is to encourage more usage of their website’s

Jobs section while delivering value to the user by offering relevant career opportunities in an

easily digestible manner.







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Six Steps for Optimizing Email Campaigns with Social Data

Now that we’ve explored several examples of social data being used to send highly targeted

emails, it’s crucial to understand, on a practical level, how this integration works. To help you

better use social data to improve your email marketing campaigns, we’ve summed up the

process in six steps.

1. Evaluate your goals to determine what social data you need

Businesses need to align their social data requests to their goals. For instance, an e-commerce

company that wants to decrease shopping cart abandonment rates might send users who

abandon their shopping cart for more than 12 hours a triggered email reminder. This requires

businesses to have data on shopping cart abandonment instances and their corresponding

users’ account data and email addresses.

When requesting users’ data, it’s important to find a medium ground between gathering the

data your business needs and not asking for so much that it feels intrusive. Respect is key here:

your business should treat data collection as a mutual exchange. As users share their

information with you, your duty is to safeguard it and use it to provide value for them.

2. Find or build a database to store, sync, and update data securely and

automatically

Once you’ve determined which user information your business can benefit most from, you’ll

need a database that can properly store and manage this data. Specifically, you’ll want a

database with the following characteristics:

Dynamic-schema - This refers to a database that can organize and index varied data

types such as profile photos, friend lists, and status updates. While traditional databases

are organized in a grid format and can only handle static data, a dynamic-schema

“Your business should treat data collection as a mutual exchange.”





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database manages information in such a way that marketers can query and easily find

the data they need.

Centralized - Storing data in a single, unified location provides easy access to data from

different web properties and collection points so your business can more efficiently scale

your marketing efforts and reach the right users at the right time.

In the cloud - Cloud storage for social data is crucial, as traditional IT systems are not

equipped to handle the massive, dynamic nature of social data. Not only that, but storing

data in the cloud also cuts IT costs and allows for quicker access and collaboration.

Automatic, real-time updating - As users continue to interact with their social

networks, they essentially send new data points that businesses should collect and

utilize. Using a database that automatically syncs with social network updates is

particularly important in order to remain relevant to your users, who are constantly

updating their social profiles.

3. Create audience segments based on your email marketing goals

Segmenting your audience is the first step when creating a tailored email campaign, as it

essentially lets you group consumers according to specific criteria, such as interests, site

actions, and backgrounds. By dividing your audience into groups, you set the stage to begin

sending tailored emails that your readers will actually care about.

To help you get going on audience segmentation, below are some sample use cases:

A news and media publisher can segment its audience by the types of articles they read

the most regularly. By dividing its readers by interests and reading history, this publisher

can send customized daily or weekly email digests to readers containing content that

interests them.

A retailer with both an e-commerce presence and physical storefronts can segment

its customers by location and send emails announcing local store sales to the relevant

users to encourage more frequent shopping.

A subscription service can segment its customers according to their subscription

activation date and send personalized email reminders to customers a few weeks before

their account expires prompting them to renew.

The next page outlines suggestions for audience segmentation to help you get started.







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4. Import segmentation and audience data into your email marketing platform

After segmenting your audience according to your email marketing goals, you’ll need to pass

this data onto your email marketing provider before you can actually put it into action. In order

to take full charge of your marketing strategy, you should invest in a database that allows you

to segment and export user data without the help of IT.

5. Craft tailored emails for each of your audience segments

Now that you’ve segmented and imported your

data to your email marketing provider, you’re ready

to start creating your tailored email campaigns.

When crafting emails for marketing, consider

personalizing each message to your specific

audience segment to achieve greater relevancy

with your users.

With email marketing, trial and error is a necessary

first step when fine-tuning your email campaigns.

To find which messages resonate the most with

your audiences, consider writing multiple

messages with the same call-to-action and A/B

testing your emails. To streamline the email

customization process, you’ll want to use an email

client that makes it easy to generate new content

for each of your subscribers.

Factors to Consider When

Working with Social Data in

Email Marketing

Is my database able to store high

volumes of data and sync them to my

email marketing client without IT

assistance?

Can my database automatically update

itself to consistently reflect accurate

data?

How can I best segment my audience

and personalize my email strategy to

my users’ social and behavioral

profiles?

Four Types of Actionable Social Data for Email Marketing

1. Website activity indicates a user’s behavior on a website, such as the time spent on each page

and what content is being shared on social networks.

2. Email interaction refers to actions taken within an email, including opening a message, clicking a

link, and unsubscribing.

3. Purchase history signifies a user’s past purchases, which can be a predictor for future spending.

4. Profile information includes any personal data that users have agreed to share with your web

properties, such as location, marital status, and friends.







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6. Measure your email marketing results

To our earlier point, measuring your campaigns is key to optimizing for email marketing

success. By monitoring and measuring your email marketing efforts, you’ll discover which

messages click and which end up in your users’ Trash folders, making it easier for you to reach

your users with the most effective messaging.

Keep in mind that email performance measurement should be an ongoing process. In other

words, your successful email campaigns may not resonate quite the same way with your

audiences a few months down the line, and their social data may change. The only way to truly

optimize for email campaign performance is to watch your results regularly and continue

adjusting your strategy based on results and the new data you acquire.

We’ve arrived at the end of our battle

Now that you have a more comprehensive understanding of just how social data impacts email

marketing to facilitate more personalized, targeted emails, you’re ready to begin putting your

learnings into practice.

To learn more about collecting, managing, and using social data in your marketing campaigns,

check out The Complete Guide to Social Infrastructure.

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ABOUT GIGYA

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relationships by turning unknown visitors into known, loyal and engaged customers.

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Gigya’s NEXUS Partner Ecosystem provides over 50 direct integrations with today’s

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To learn more, refer to our NEXUS Partners site.

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ABOUT STRONGVIEW

StrongView is the cross-channel marketing software provider that gives

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customers across email, mobile, social, display and web. Combining the

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provides enterprise marketers unparalleled insight into how to deepen

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both SaaS and on-premise, allowing companies to deploy StrongView’s

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Based in Redwood City, CA, and backed by leading venture capital

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other marketing platform providers for more than a decade.

For a stronger view of marketing go to www.StrongView.com, and follow us at

www.twitter.com/StrongView and www.facebook.com/StrongViewInc.





Guide: Using Social Data to Win at Email Marketing

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