Email marketing and the power of first party data

Email marketing is not dead.

In fact in 2022 email was the top distribution channel for Australian media planners, ahead of paid social and search (Hubspot ‘The State of Media & Content Planning).

Those marketers who know email’s value have already experienced how powerful it can be and have continued to invest in it as a cornerstone of any complete first party data strategy.

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With the ongoing tightening of data privacy laws in Australia (and globally) and the impending cookieless future (which Google has now moved to the second half of 2024), it’s more important than ever for us to understand our audience.

And email is an incredibly important tool we can use to do just that.

Having access to a customer’s email address means we’ve engaged with them directly in a permission-based way.

Why does this matter?

Because entertaining, informing, educating and adding value for our customers and then working to understand what really matters to them, will help us to better serve their needs.

Given we can expect ongoing disruption when it comes to the data digital marketers are able to use, there’s something we need to come to grips with.

Email marketing is a direct, cost-effective way for us to see how our customers relate to what it is we are putting out into the marketplace.

How do we do this effectively?

By sending them content that is of value to them.

If we segment our audience so we are tailoring our content before we’re sending it in the first place, that’s a good start.

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From there, we need to review audience behaviour and engagement after we’ve communicated with them.

We can then use that information to ensure every single time we reach out to our audience/community, it becomes increasingly more tailored/of value.

Ideally we can then reach and engage with other similar potential customers online. This in turn increases the first party data we have access to as well as increasing our audience size and the level of permissions they grant us all at the same time.

If we do this well, we will see an increase in engagement, conversion and knowledge across our audience.

We can also use this knowledge to inform our ad strategy from creative, to distribution and budgeting. Because we already know what is working for our existing customers and what is driving more people to join that customer base.

And we do this over and over again in a feedback loop.

What does this mean?

We need to develop a killer combination of really understanding what our first party data is telling us, combined with a human-centric approach to how we craft our communications.

This means, we’ll have to work harder than ever to keep our existing audience and to understand them better 

This in turn, should help us to grow our audience and subsequently the pool of first party data that we have to draw on when making strategic marketing decisions.

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Those who do this will be best placed to weather increased disruption to how data-driven marketers do business into the future.

Are you ready to hit the ground running and get the most out of your email marketing?

Grow with us.