Introduction

Email marketing has served marketers well over the past 15 years –  it was one of the fastest growing communication tools of the past century and is one of the most cost effective ways to communicate with your current and potential customers. Although email marketing can really help a business, its popularity is slowly becoming its downfall. We have all experienced it, hundreds of irrelevant emails that we have to delete from our inbox every day. This avalanche of email is decreasing the chances of messages of actual significance getting through! So what's the answer? How do you ensure you are heard? It’s all about relevance.
You must invest time in understanding your prospects. What of your offering are they interested in? How often are they visiting your website, and what previous emails did they find interesting? Developing this level of understanding will allow you to target your correspondence and achieve a much higher level of cut through.
Database marketing is made up of 3 core functions - capture, update & target.

Capture

Firstly you must capture information that is going to be useful; this can come from a number of sources. From internal offline sales information, like what a prospect has enquired about, to online data like recent online purchases. Look at the type of information you already have on clients and create profiles that will allow you to pull it into one central location.

Update

A database is only useful if it is up to date. An out of date database can at times be damaging to your brand so ensure that you maintain it. One way to achieve this is to get your prospects to do it themselves. Online resource centres are a popular way to get prospects to edit and update their details, while running competitions can also allow you to request profile updates.

Target

Now that you have information on your prospects you can start to tailor your message. You see that a section of your database has recently entered a competition to win a particular product. Why not thank them for their participation and extend a special offer to them? Remember to personalise your message as much as you can – this improves relevance and in turn your cut through rate.

Conclusion

Database marketing allows you to gain an in-depth understanding on your how your prospects are interacting with your campaigns. They provide marketers with a valuable source of interested leads to pass through to sales departments.
As markets become increasingly overcrowded it’s important to do more than send generic email blasts. Speak to your prospects needs, capture, update, target and make your message relevant.