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There’s hardly a business that doesn’t see email as a key component in its marketing strategy. But “open rates” can be less than expected when you don’t hit the right target at the right time. But sometimes, the emails just fly out there, and you really have no way to know if you hit the right person with the message at the best time to initiate purchase-type action.

Getting a little more granular could help you deliver your message at the most effective time. You can start by categorizing your customers and prospects and then listing what information might be most useful for them in making a purchasing decision.

You might want to start your fact-finding by having your customers fill out a questionnaire. You can design your own or take your pick of several online survey providers. Whichever way you choose to go, keep it quick and simple. Your customers should want to give you some input in how you can help them increase their business.

Here are some sample questions:

• What are your key issues? You likely know most of them, but if you ask them to list their top 3 or top five, you can pin down areas where you can help them more.
• Who are the key industry thought leaders you follow for advice? You can learn two things here: 1) You can see who influences some of their decision-making, and 2) you can find additional sources of information to help you provide more proactive solutions.
• How often do you want to be contacted? Everyone has a different need, but this could help you find a happy medium for satisfying your customers.
• When do you want to be contacted? There is an abundance of research on the best days and times for general or specific industries, and it’s a subject worthy of its own discussion. Your schedule will come down to this question: When are your customers most likely to be thinking about my products or services?

It takes some effort on your part, but your customers and clients will have another reason to view you as a trusted business partner who knows their business and the needs of their customers and clients.

Once you have this information, you can set up a profile for each of your customers, and you can use that profile to tailor the email content. You might determine that your customers fall into three different categories, and you can then segment your emailing lists to fit those categories.

Then, you should develop your own process of gathering the news and information that would be most useful to your customers and your relationship with them and send out the email. This is where you can make that personal difference. You can make them feel you are looking out for them and their business and that you are offering solutions that can help them be proactive.

The key is to focus on quality. As we often discuss, search engines are looking much more closely at the relevancy and accuracy of your website and anything you post on it. They have algorithms to pin down the data, and the data can determine your page rankings on SEO.

But there’s another reason to focus on quality. Everyone is trying to do too many things in too little time. When you earn a reputation for delivering the right information at the right, you’ll be viewed as an asset, and that will get your email opened at a higher rate.

At NicheLabs, we can help you design and launch an email marketing plan – and make sure it integrates with your other digital marketing tools. Contact us at 888-978-9254, or by sending us an email using our website contact form. We can also help expand your universe with news coverage and validate your customers’ context with your website, SEO program or other marketing activities. We love to talk about marketing, best practices for SEO programs, brand messaging and content strategy.