How do you fight back with the right email communication plan?

An astonishing 98 percent of customers read online reviews for local businesses, with 75 percent saying that a review that describes a positive experience with the brand is the most important factor in their decision-making.

While responding to customer reviews is certainly important, you can learn more about your target audience’s concerns by digging into the details. The things that people mention in their review (good or bad) are directly related to the pain points that matter most to them.

Whether it is an insight into how people use your product or the fact that they are drawn to your services because of the price, these details offer insight into what an audience values about your business.

One of the easiest ways to learn more about your target buyers’ pain points is to simply ask. Online surveys that ask targeted questions about their experience with your brand, their interests, or the challenges they are facing can give you crucial insights. Sending a follow-up email shortly after a customer makes a purchase is a great time to reach them while your brand is still on their mind.

Your sales and support people generally have the closest connection between your brand and your target audience. These individuals speak with customers and prospects day in and day out. As a result, they have firsthand insights into the challenges your customers are facing. Ask these team members what customers are saying about your products and services.

Encouraging your teams to ask follow-up questions can also help you uncover additional insights into your target audience’s pain points. Asking what is keeping them from trying your brand or why they are choosing a competitor instead can help you understand where your messaging — or aspects of the service itself — is missing the mark.

Gaining insights into your niche as a whole can actually be even easier than focusing on previous customers. Even with the rise of social media groups, forums remain a popular source of communication on specialty topics. Discord alone boasts over 150 million users who use it for community forums, file sharing, and video calls.

Whether your niche involves automobiles or computer programming, or if you want to target fans of a particular sports team or media property, there are social media groups, forums, and other online communities where users interact with each other.

You’re far from the only one creating content or promoting products and services in your niche. Even if your own audience is relatively small, you can learn more about your pain points by looking at the comments on blogs, videos, and other content from the most popular producers in your umbrella.

While not every comment is going to have value, focus on comments that mention problems users are facing or those which are critical of the content for not covering the desired topic. Quite often, the categories that others in your niche choose to cover with their content can give you insight into what points are most relevant to your target audience. After all, they’re doing their own customer research to create content that resonates with their followers.

Understanding customer pain points won’t just help you better understand your customers — it will also help you realize the full potential of your product or service. By relating what you do to the pressing problems your target buyers most desperately want to solve, you’ll become that much more relevant in their lives.

For your chance to be successful, everyone involved needs to understand it. Define all involved people in the change and all systems that the change will affect. Consider the magnitude of the change and the timescale involved in implementing it. It is helpful to be specific so that you can accurately assess the ability of your organization to adopt the change.

There are general pre-made tools available online for assessing the necessary change. You can choose one or several of these and adapt them to your specific situation. You might consider modifying the tools so that they better suit the needs of your organization.

You can start by assessing reactions to change by using your tools of choice through general surveys. Try to gauge awareness of the proposed change in every important department. Also, ask about factors related to the respondent's willingness to initiate the change, necessary technical abilities, and any feedback or concerns.

Review the results of your general surveys and targeted interviews. Look for missing areas that you can address before beginning to change anything in your email communication plan.

According to the Digital Marketing Association’s research 77% of ROI generated through email comes from segmentation. If you’re not segmenting, you can’t maximize your marketing budget.

Knowing where your customers are, helps you tap into weather patterns. You’re not talking to Wisconsoners about opening up the swimming pool in April. But you would be if the customer is in Mississippi. Someone in Texas isn’t likely to know what a roof rake is. But someone in Maine would. Tap into large area celebrations, sporting events, and shared qualities.

People in different age groups may respond to a different language, challenges, images, and offers. Segment by age to communicate in their language.

We don’t want to go overboard with gender stereotypes. But there are times when segmenting by gender makes sense. If you’re a razor, hygiene, or clothing company, you likely have products for each gender.

You don’t just have one target customer. Within that broader group, you have different needs, goals, and emotional triggers. Segment these groups based on survey results to make email communication that’s much more relevant.

This may seem like a crazy amount of work. It can be if you don’t have a plan. But start breaking things down. You’ll find you can create content. You can then make small changes for each segment.

You may consider a more discreet CTA, as you don’t want to annoy your users. But people refer to a clear call to action, as it shows you have nothing to hide. Your CTA should look like a clickable button so there’s no mistaking it. It should state exactly what you want the person to do:

Add an Urgency Word if the CTA is short for an even greater impact. The CTA should always be at the top of your email. Designers call this “above the fold”. The majority of people don’t scroll down a page and effective email communication includes a CTA that is toward the top.

All in all, as an email marketer, you have to understand how you should know how to communicate with your primary audience properly. Prepare your message according to the newsletter aim and keep things straight with your subscribers.

To accomplish each point illustrated above, you should test how impactful your emails are, and the best tool you can use is Markeaze. Easily segregate and manage your audience into individual segments to achieve better reach while choosing the correct email from our 100+ pre-made email collection.