Relevance is the cornerstone of advanced email marketing strategies: getting the right message to the right person at the right time. An enormous amount of our attention as marketers is devoted to capturing the attention - and reaction - of our audience to the messages we send.

At the Internet World event in London last month, I unveiled some email marketing work we have recently done with Matches (http://www.matchesfashion.com/) - a multi-channel retailer trusted by London’s most fashion-literate clientele, offering the best of the best in established and new international designer labels.

With often limited stocks of highly desired clothing, part of the marketing promise Matches offers is helping customers to access hard-to-get pieces. The best pieces don’t last long - there’s a delicate balance between creating demand for the stock that’s available and avoiding disappointment. At the same time, there's a broad range of items to offer, so getting the right offer, efficiently, to the right person in good time is critical to the business.

So when Matches received a shipment of some fabulous garments from avant grade demi-couture label Boudicca, we ran an email marketing test using email list segmentation to identify the most effective targeting criteria. Specifically, we tested to see how the following target groups would react to the offer:

• People who have previously bought items from the Boudicca range
• People who have asked to be alerted to new items from Boudicca during the "welcome program"
• People who have viewed Boudicca items on the Matches Web site during the previous week

So which target group (email list segment) performed most strongly?

As the information above shows (click on image to view full size), all three email marketing campaigns performed really well. The email campaigns sent to the "expressed preference" and "previously purchased" segments both had a 9.3% unique click-through rate (CTR) - and, critically, led to high revenue-per-email figures. But the star of the show was the email sent to the segment of people who had recently browsed the Boudicca pages on Matches.

Nearly half (48%) of the people who’d recently browsed Matches' Boudicca pages opened the email, and more than a quarter (26.6%) clicked through to the site. Again, this translated to a terrific revenue-per-email figure. Especially when you consider that the highlighted garment above retails at £648 (approximately $950 USD).

So relevance delivers email marketing results, and within that timeliness is a highly significant factor. All three email list segments have shown definite interest in the label, but the people who had browsed in the past week were by far the most responsive.

These results clearly indicate how important it is to use your marketing analytics to help direct your messaging strategy in order to create value for your customers and give them a reason to engage with you.

Email marketing has a special opportunity to deliver relevance because of the clear permission that has been exchanged between marketer and customer: a clear exchange of value. This brings email much closer to the marketing opportunities presented by a good loyalty program, such as those operated by large UK supermarkets (i.e. Tesco "Clubcard" or Sainsburys "Nectar"). These programs trade permission to collect data for highly personalised special offers and other rewards - much like a good email marketing program does.

The context of that permission - and the expectation of value that the ensuing dialogue between marketer and customer hinge upon - make the gathering of (and use of) this data a worthwhile exchange.

###

About the Author

Mike Weston is VP UK & EMEA Sales for Lyris. He's a leading figure and a regular speaker on the London digital marketing scene, with a particular focus on customer communication tools including email marketing and social media marketing.

Related Resources:

• Subscribe to Inside Lyris HQ our monthly online-marketing newsletter.
• Download free online-marketing guides, tools and webinars in the Lyris Online-Marketing Resource Center.