The Power of Email Marketing & Buyer Journeys
Since about 67% of the buyer’s journey now takes place digitally, it has never been more important to create and mail campaigns that inform, educate, and push your prospects to purchase your products.
Email marketing sometimes gets a bad rep due to the antics of marketers who use it to send spammy content to users. Despite this, it is still one of the most effective ways to nurture leads, build connections, market your products, and boost brand awareness.
When it comes to customer acquisition, email marketing is 40 times more potent than all social media platforms. The trick to creating an email campaign that works is to get familiar with your buyer personas, then segment, personalize, and automate your communication strategy accordingly.
To harness the power of your email marketing campaigns and buyer journeys, you need to tailor your messaging to connect with the right audience at the right time and provide the right value that adequately solves their specific needs and problems.
Below, we have put together four ways that developing a solid email marketing strategy and mapping it to your buyer journey will help boost your emailing efforts and drive better results over time.
- Determine who your audience is.
- Map your customer journey.
- Segment your list and send personalized email content.
- Align your email campaigns with the buyer’s journey.
Two-thirds of customers have purchased after viewing email marketing communication sent to them by a brand that interested them. There are vast possibilities and benefits that you stand to reap from creating and sending email campaigns that delight prospects and customers enough to spur into taking the desired action.
It can be overwhelming to think of crafting buyer journeys and designing successful email marketing campaigns to match. Still, when you take it step-by-step, it becomes easier to accomplish.
1. Determine who your audience is
Once you have a clear idea of who your target customer is, you’ll be able to discover, study, and understand their motivations and problems, and perfectly tailor your email campaigns to address them.
A defined buyer persona lets you devise an email marketing strategy geared towards building trust and brand awareness by providing useful and engaging content from where your target audience can easily derive value.
A buyer persona is a constructed image of people who buy or might be interested in buying the products or services you sell. If you don’t already have one in place, you cannot pull off an effective email marketing campaign.
Take some time to research and find out who your real buyers are and what their core values and goals are. When constructing your buyer persona, you should be focusing on the following areas to gain in-depth insight into who they are.
- Success factors: What personal or operational results would your target buyer hope to achieve by purchasing your product or service?
- Priority initiatives: What do buyers buy from a company like yours instead of the competition?
- The buyer’s journey: What process do your buyers follow when researching and selecting a product or service to satisfy their needs and overcome barriers to purchase.
- Perceived barriers: What concerns or issues may cause your target buyer to decide not to patronize your brand?
- Decision criteria: What do your intended customers perceive as most critical in the offerings of you and your competitors?
After successfully answering these questions and crafting your buyer personas, you can frame your email marketing communications to discuss the core values of your business to which your personas can relate. You can also talk about how those values can help them solve a problem or enjoy the results for which they’re looking.
2. Map your customer journey
Take a walk in your customers’ shoes. How do they interact with your company from their first contact to interaction? What touchpoints do they have, and what actions do they take at each of those points?
Being able to establish the patterns in your customer’s buying journey would allow you to anticipate their next move better and send the right message at the right time to produce the desired response.
Essentially, a buyer journey lets you know what your customers’ needs are, how well you’re meeting them, and what tweaks or improvements you can make to serve them better.
To create a map of your customer journey, you will need various kinds of information, such as:
- The type of device they use to initiate interaction with your company―the specific type of mobile device or personal computer used.
- The channel used to create engagement―website, pay-per-click ad, social media page, email, or SMS.
- The information they received and the action they took as a result―what content did they view on your website or in your email campaign, what links did they click on, or which documents were downloaded?
- Establish a buying pattern by using the timing between each of their interactions.
The buyer journey itself can be divided into three main stages:
1. Awareness
This is the part where the buyer discovers that they have a problem and begins to look for a solution. At this stage, 72% of buyers turn to Google to find ways of solving their needs.
Let’s say the buyer then clicks on a piece of content that addresses their problem or on a paid ad, and they land on your website. Here they find relevant information teaches them how to resolve the issue at hand, so they decide to subscribe to your newsletter.
You can now start sending targeted email content that provides more information about their needs and how your brand and products can help satisfy them.
2. Consideration
Now that the buyer knows what their problem is, they’re going to start researching their options to find the most cost-effective solution.
They will look for reviews, testimonials, case studies, and any other information that they can shed more light on the best options or approaches to overcome their issue.
Although the buyer is not yet ready to purchase at this stage, they are looking to engage more deeply with the available offerings. This is your chance to entice them with further details about your products to move them to the end of their journey.
3. Decision
This is where purchasing happens. The buyer will take all the pros and cons of buying from your brand into consideration and compare it with other competition offers before deciding to take action.
At this stage, the buyer has whittled down the list of options to the vendors with who they feel they have a connection.
What they need to know now is how your products work, what their experience would be like if they choose to patronize you, and final reassurances to help seal the deal.
3. Segment your list and send personalized email content
The best way to keep your email least relevant and effective is to segment it. You shouldn’t be sending the same message to all of your subscribers because they’re not all going to be at the same stage in their buyer journeys.
In a study by Lyris Inc, 39% of the participating marketers experienced higher open rates from using segmented email lists, 28% reported reduced unsubscribe rates, 21% saw higher customer retention, and 24% experienced increased sales leads, better deliverability, and higher revenue.
To improve your marketing results, you can try segmenting your email list by:
- Industry/Company: If your target audience is in different industries, emails that are specific to their industry would be more relevant. Separate your lists based on company type, size, and purpose.
- Geography: If your business has geographic limitations or the location of a recipient influences purchase, then it’s a good idea to segment your list by geography―IP area, address, area code, or time zone.
- Behavior: Tailor your email content according to the action that someone has already taken on your site―pages they viewed, the content they downloaded―and the emails they have opened.
- Job title or role: An email that speaks to the concerns or challenges of a non-management employee might be different from an executive or business owner, so your strategy should consider that.
With email marketing automation software, there are seemingly endless segmentation possibilities. Try not to get too carried away. Just keep it simple. Send out personalized and targeted email copy that a given buyer will be able to relate to at the current stage of their buyer journey.
4. Align your email campaigns with the buyer’s journey
Depending on where a customer is on their buyer journey, specific messages will have more of an impact than others in helping to nudge them towards the next stage. Consistently motivating your customers and prospects by providing timely and relevant communication is the best way to build loyalty and boost sales with your email efforts.
Here are some of the key pointers to keep in mind when creating content for each of the stages of a buyer’s journey to ensure effectiveness and maximize results.
Awareness stage
The content you put out at this stage should help the buyer identify their problem, while also positioning your brand as an authority or expert in that field. You can engage subscribers at this stage with:
- Welcome emails.
- Ebooks.
- Analysis reports.
- Whitepapers.
- Product research.
- Tutorial videos.
- Free trials, guides, and other educational materials.
Consideration stage
At this stage, the buyer would be evaluating the different options that would help solve their problem. Your content goal here is to show them what advantages your brand and product have over the competition.
Tell the buyer why they should choose you and the added value you have to offer. In detail, explain the features and specifications of your product because the buyer wants to know everything without being overwhelmed.
Your email messaging at this stage should include:
- Webinar invitations
- Case studies
- Free samples and trials
- Reviews and testimonials
- FAQ sheets
- Catalogs
- Expert guides
- Promotional incentives
- Links to product-related podcasts and videos
Decision stage
This is the purchasing stage, where the buyer is pretty much convinced about your product. They just have to decide whether to go with your brand or one of your competitors. All they need is a little push to convince them to choose you and get them past the finish line.
Your email content at this stage should be telling them about your payment process and options, any onboarding details they need to be aware of, as well as providing answers to any questions they might have. Entice them with offers they can’t refuse and incentivize them to complete abandoned transactions.
Try including the following content in your email communications:
- Trial downloads
- Case studies
- Product and services comparisons
- Demos
- Free consultations
- Estimates or quotes
- Free delivery
- Discounts and coupons
Conclusion
When done right, your email marketing can engage your prospects and customers and keep them delighted as they move through the various stages of the buyer journey. Craft and send emails that specifically meet the needs of the buyer at every point in their journey.
Keep in mind that the buyer journey doesn’t end simply because you’ve managed to turn a prospect into a paying customer. You need to continue delivering value to the buyer after they purchase to improve satisfaction and build loyalty.
With this kind of meticulous care and personalized approach, your customers are more likely to spread the word about your business to anyone who cares to listen, which translates to more leads and potential sales for your business.
