How Can Big Data Improve Your Email Marketing

It can be devastating to think that only 25% of businesses are properly using their data. These are all missed opportunities.

Proper use of data can improve engagement, offer wider reach and grow your business. Its value is unquestionable, yet so many companies still miss the chance to use it for their own benefit.

What is Big Data?

Big data is a collection of large and complex data that is difficult to process, analyze, curate and share. Big data is supposed to help in solving business issues and in creating strategies.

This is becoming an increasingly popular term and it describes the exponential growth and availability of both structured and unstructured data.

Managing, curating and processing this data is something that companies struggle with due to its complexity.

6 Ways Big Data Can Improve Your Email Marketing

Data is a well-known necessity when it comes to improving your results based on informed decisions. Here is how you can use big data to bring more quality and personalization to your email marketing campaigns.

1. Segment your audience

One of the most important steps is, naturally, segmentation. This is an important process of separating your audience into groups based on a quality. So, for example, you could segment your audience based on their location, their age, gender or some behavioral aspects – whatever you think is best for your business.

Hans Brown, Data Analyst at Essayroo, comments: “Big data is very important in this process because it gives you enough information for you to be able to assess which customer falls into which group. You can get this information on your email provider, analytics tool or social media. You can also use various other tools for segmentation – some government books and public records which hold geographical and demographic information on your customers”.

2. Define your pricing strategies

Pricing goes hand in hand with marketing. Marketing may get the leads to your page but it’s not ok if the prices scare them away. It's best to stay reasonable, yet competitive, with pricing. You can use data for pricing variations and determine how it affects your overall business.

3. Send the right message

By segmenting and targeting your messages you can get so much more out of your emails. People prefer when a personalized email arrives and shows them exactly what they want to see – whether it's content, products or information.

You can use big data to find out enough about your audience to realize what they need at that particular time. For instance, there might be a higher demand on maintenance how-to content in your niche or something similar. Make sure that the content is always of top-notch quality when it comes to the style and accuracy. Your emails should always be properly formatted and accurate – you can use tools like StateOfWriting and UK Writings.

You'll be able to create the content that your audience needs which will, in turn, increase your engagement and revenue.

4. Have good timing

Timing is just as important as having a targeted message. You need to have an idea when your audience is usually available and might read your email right away. For instance, they might like reading their mail exclusively in the morning or prefer reading it in the evening.

You might feel as if this is not so important but it actually is. An email can easily be missed or forgotten. You need to be there when they are there.

This information will, again, depend on your target audience. You might need several timings for different groups. There is no better way to find this out than using big data. It can help you find the best times to send an email and all other kind of information – the best day of the week, time of day etc. You can find this data on your email provider and analytics tool but you can also use social media or something similar.

5. Analyze your results

Marketers and analysts have their own ways of measuring and analyzing their data and the process can be quite simple. They take all of the data that they need for the metrics that they focus on, after which they check to see how those metrics measure up to benchmarks and their goals and, in the end, they come up with ways of improving those metrics in the next period.

6. Define your customer persona

Defining your customer personas is an important part – this helps you target your messages even better. “Many companies devise their own buyer personas based on the information they get about their customers. The buyer persona needs to be created based on an in-depth research and understanding of your customers and their deepest needs, wants and so on”, - explains Lorenzo Nelson, an Email Marketer at Boomessays and Academ advisor editor.

Final Thoughts

While understanding and using big data can be pretty difficult, the benefits of using it are endless. You could improve your business and increase your revenue all while offering the best of your content and products to your customers. These tips are here to give you an insight on how big data can help.

This is a guest post written by Freddie Tubbs. 

Freddie Tubbs is a data analyst at Bigassignments. He regularly takes part in online data conferences and writes expert columns for Australian help and Oxessays blogs.