Various Methods to leverage Social Intent Data for E-mail Marketing

Marketing automation tools have made the overall process of email marketing extremely easy. Today, you can launch a massive email campaign with thousands of recipients under the radar with the click of a single button. Studies show that over 124.5 billion business emails are sent every day! (Source) This is probably the number one reason why your email campaigns are failing again and again. You have to compete with a huge market now. 

The second biggest reason why your email campaigns fail is the lack of personalization. Sending generic emails is easy. Most digital marketers create one generic email and use the mail merge fields of the marketing automation tool to personalize an extremely small part of it. These marketers fail to understand the true importance of personalization of emails. This is where social intent data hops in.

What is Social Intent Data?

Social intent data is critical information that can give you a quick insight into the interests of the target customers. It can help you pinpoint the interests that reveal what the prospect is reading, searching and cares about. The social intent data can help you increase your click to conversion ratio if you can leverage it to design custom campaigns for the prospects around the globe.

Important Data Points to Measure Social Intent

Before we dive into the ways to use social intent, let’s understand the important data points that we need to capture the social intent of the prospects correctly.

Note: ‘They’ in these points refers to the target prospects.

• Keywords they Use

SEO is one of the most clichéd terms on the internet today. However, that does not change the fact that it is extremely important. With SEO and keyword optimization, you can easily increase the chances of success in the digital marketing landscape. By knowing what keywords attract your prospects the most, you can know more about their interests. With a keyword analysis, you will figure out what the prospects actually like and need. 

The keyword analysis for your target audience is extremely functional in the B2C markets where the sales cycle is slow and impulsive. By purchasing a set of the strongest keywords on Google AdWords Management and using them in your emails (in both the subject lines as well as the content body) you can increase the click and open rates for your email significantly.

• People they Follow

The social media is huge. People have options to follow billions of individuals across the globe. However, most of us do not follow more than a few thousand individuals (on the higher end of the spectrum). By getting an insight into whom your target audience follows, you can market your products accordingly. Some large organizations directly partner up with these social media influencers to reach the target audience in an effective manner.

• Events they Follow

Let’s say that you are selling comic books on the internet. You can safely assume that almost all the people that attend the latest comic book convention will belong to your target audience set. By targeting these people, you will increase the chances of conversion significantly and spend a lesser amount of time in luring them in through attractive campaigns.

Note: This technique works only when you have a truly valuable service/product to offer. 

• The Competition they Interact With

With effective competitive analysis, you can easily compete head-to-head with some of the biggest names on the internet. If a person is using your direct competitor’s product/service regularly, he/she is a great customer for you too. Look for the inefficiencies of the other product/service and see how you can improvise your offer. You can also offer a similar product/service at a smaller price tag to lure in the customers.

Ways to Use Social Intent for Email Marketing

Here are a few ways in which you can use social intent data for effective email marketing.

• Target Pain Points

With the social intent data, you can pinpoint exactly what your target prospects hate/love about their existing products/services. You can target their pain points to your advantage and showcase your offer in the bright light. They say that good marketers offer discounts while the best ones offer solutions.

With a solution-oriented mindset, you can use the social intent data to your advantage in both the B2C as well as B2B markets.

• Offer a Better Value for Money

With social intent data, you know exactly what the prospect is looking for. It is possible that the prospect is truly interested in your product but does not purchase it because of one major flaw. Maybe your price is too high or you are not offering enough features. With competitive analysis, you can notice the browsing trends of your target audience and pinpoint the exact location where you are missing out on the opportunity.

• Show Urgency

Marketers suggest that by showcasing urgency in selling your product/service, you have a much higher chance of selling it quickly. Let’s take a small example here. Let’s say that you are trying to sell sneakers on the internet. Now you can position your ads in one of the following ways:

• Here are the most affordable pair of sneakers you will find on the planet. Check out them out here.
• Buy the most affordable pair of sneakers on the planet today! Limited time offer. By them at 50% off till 15th September. Hurry, limited stock only!

Your prospects will be psychologically tuned to buy the sneakers with the second type of ad since it showcases a sense of urgency in the deal. 

• Segregate and Personalize the Campaign

Ideally, every marketer should design a different email template for each member of the target audience. This produces the best chances of conversion for the company. However, this process is time-consuming and does not produce a good return on investment. Therefore, marketers avoid this practice completely and focus on generating highly generic content for a massive target audience.

With social intent data, you can segregate your audience into slightly more well-defined groups based on age, gender, interests, etc. After segregation, you can devise a separate template for each group. This marketing strategy will bump up your conversion figure due to effective targeting. 

• Showcase Successful Case Studies

Putting a face on your campaign is the best way to generate trust and reliability within a short period. By showcasing case studies from happy customers, you can easily capture the attention of new prospects while also retaining the existing ones. 

This strategy works great in the B2B market since the sales cycle, as well as the scope of investment, is much longer. In the B2B service industry you to build a staggering sense of customer loyalty to ensure that your customers stay with your brand for a longer period.

• Score Leads/Prospects

It is easy to get carried away with prospects that show true interest in your product/service. The best salespeople know that letting your emotions rule the sales pitch is not a good idea. Instead, they leverage the attention of their prospects to score a good deal and make a faster sale. By scoring your leads, you can focus on the ones that have the best chances of converting quickly. Instead of wasting time on the prospects that will consume too much energy and not generate enough returns, you will stay focused on the prospects that will purchase your offer quickly without producing any hassle.

• Leave a Sense of Mystery

You cannot sell a product through email. Instead, you can only generate enough interest. By leaving a sense of mystery and generating engaging content, you can lead your prospects to your website where the actual sale happens. 

This strategy will help you increase your visitor count on the website significantly in a short period. You should always perform an A/B test for your email templates to know which one work in the most effective manner. Make sure that you have an intriguing subject line on the email to capture the attention of the prospects.

• Offer True Value

The best email campaigns are the ones that offer true value to the customers. Instead of making false claims, these emails contain specific nuggets of information that can help the prospect. Send an e-book or a PDF attachment that you think will help the prospects.

The best emails not only receive a good click and open rate but also receive a prompt response from the users. 

• Create Actionable CTAs

The CTA (Call-To-Action) line is one of the most important aspects of your email marketing strategy. Novice marketers often create weak or generic CTAs for their emails. On the other hand, the best marketers leverage the CTA to redirect traffic to their websites quickly.

Ideally, all marketers should use social intent data to segregate and target their audience effectively. If you have never used the social intent data until now, you should start right away!