We often discuss the shotgun and rifle approach to marketing, and with email communications it plays an extremely important role. The premise is straight forward, but the approach you implement will have significant implications on the effectiveness of your email efforts.

Every email marketer you ask will likely balk at the shotgun approach and jump straight to a rifle strategy. While in theory this is ‘optimal’ – it’s not always that black and white. Additionally, many email marketers pick up the rifle, put on their sniper costume, and call it a day. While this of course is a great starting point, there are opportunities to have a greater impact with multiple approaches also utilizing a high powered blow-dart.

Let’s Examine the Shotgun, Rifle and High Powered Blow Dart

1. Shotgun Approach

Basics: Your email communications are broad and promotions are developed for a wide and diverse audience. In other email terms; you are sending one general email to your entire list with no segmentation and little or no personalization.

Why it’s Bad: For starters, you are not leveraging the email channel. With available technology, you have the opportunity to create targeted segments and dynamically insert personalized data. With a ‘batch and blast’ approach like the shotgun, everyone receives the same email and promotion.

However: What if you don’t have any data (outside of email address) to segment? Many companies starting off with email don’t implement all the best practices for list acquisition, not to mention proper tracking of email engagement for segmentation purposes. In this case, you may be limited to a broad email – and this creates an opportunity to quickly get important information about your subscribers for more refined communications in the future.

For starters:

A. Make sure you have navigation in your emails — which will help you segment based on click activity.

B. Conduct A/B subject line testing to better leverage that big send.

C. Create an email preference center to get more data from you subscribers.

D. Implement some email segmentation just from email engagement.

We of course want to strive for targeted, ‘rifle like’ communication with our subscribers – and when possible this should absolutely be implemented. But In the event you are unable to do this from the start, do begin collecting information that will allow you to make better use of the email channel in the future.

2. Rifle Approach

Basics: Your email communications are focused and campaigns are directed to a select target audience/segment. Promotions are extremely relevant and timely, and you strive to create the impression of a 1-1 communication.

Why it’s Good: Instead of sending one message to 100,000 subscribers, we may be sending 20 messages to 5,000 subscribers based on strategically defined criteria. Here we place our subscribers into meaningful segments and serve them relevant content. This may be done through individual messaging or utilizing dynamic content to execute our segmentation and content strategies.

This will have tremendous impact on the success of your email efforts, and should be implemented whenever possible. This is an extremely summarized description, but the basic premise is that we want to provide relevant and extremely targeted communications and promotions to our subscribers.

3. High Powered Blow Dart

Basics: The blow dart picks up where the rifle left off. With the rifle approach, we are creating targeted segments, developing relevant and timely communications, and creating a better experience for our subscribers. This may or may not include advanced personalization within the email, but we like to make sure it goes that extra step and utilize a blow dart, if you will, to truly strive for a 1-1 communication.

Here we make sure we utilize dynamic content when possible, and further personalize the communication by inserting data that is relevant.

Example of dynamic content from American Advantage

Example of simple personalization from Wells Fargo

Summary

1. Create targeted email segments and focus your content and promotions. Become a sniper and provide extremely relevant and timely communications.

2. If for whatever reason you don’t have data to segment, then start on a basic level with email engagement, reviewing your acquisition process, and upgrading to a better email platform if needed. There is no reason you can’t segment based on some criteria (historical opens, click activity, list origination, products purchased etc)

3. Create an even more personalized experience and utilize dynamic content, personalization, and even more specific targeting.

Cheers,

Forest Bronzan

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