Email Marketing by the Numbers: How to Use the World’s Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level

4. Email Is Data Driven

A lot of marketers don’t know what to make of data. They understand that customer data is good to have, but they aren’t sure how to use it. Maybe it’s too time consuming to leverage the data. Or expensive. One blast print insert is much cheaper and easier to execute than 50 versions based on profile data, isn’t it?

With email, you can easily use data to tailor a unique message and dialogue for the individual recipient. Data is an absolutely critical part of relationship building. You need data to show that you recognize uniqueness, to prove that you are listening, and to become more and more relevant with your messaging over time. Marketers should be focused on gathering data at every customer touch point. Touch points can be anything from web interactions, to phone calls, to sales, direct mail, or even over the counter. Retailers focus on point-of-sale (POS) systems. Restaurants use reservation systems, and businesses have CRM systems. The key to email is that it makes all of this data actionable.

To recap, email is easy to use, inexpensive, interactive, and data driven. The combination means a really powerful marketing tool that makes great relationship building possible. And remember, aren’t great relationships with our constituents what all of us are striving for?

I want to reiterate that email marketing is not just for the big players. Many small organizations think that marketing requires a budget the size of Mount Everest. It doesn’t. It requires ...