13 Examples of Targeted Email Marketing You'll Want to Try

What is targeted email marketing?

Targeted email marketing refers to sending out customized campaigns to your subscribers based on specific information. Such information may include their interests, previous behavior, demographics, geo-data, and a lot more.

Let’s have a look at a simple example of targeted email marketing.

OAS, a fashion brand, sent out an email only to female customers to promote its new women’s collection.

Here is another example. Candle Delirium uses a targeted email campaign to re-engage dormant subscribers – those who used to open and interact with their emails but haven’t done so in a while.

There are many different types of targeted email marketing campaigns:

• Location-based targeting
• Cart abandonment emails
• Win-back campaigns
• Recommendations based on previous purchases
• Recommendations based on email interactions
• Birthday/anniversary emails

Each email type is crafted to resonate with the recipient and deliver highly relevant, personalized offers.

13 Examples of targeted email marketing

Let’s look at 13 real-life examples of targeted email campaigns from other ecommerce brands – from the easiest to more advanced.

Location-based targeted email campaigns

Segmenting your list by the subscribers’ location helps you reach the right audience, without spamming everyone else.

Here are a few examples of when to use location-based targeting:

• When you’re hosting an in-person event
• When you’re opening a new business location
• When you want to promote a specific offer at a specific location
• When you’re tying your campaign to local events/weather
• When you’re promoting a seasonal offer in a specific location (e.g. beachwear in coastal regions during the summer)

… and many more!

Here’s what that looks like in action.

Kotn, a sustainable apparel brand, sent out this email to their subscribers in Brooklyn to notify them that the physical store is open and welcomes gift shoppers during the holiday season.

And At Home, a home decor store sent this email to their subscribers in Colorado. To inform them about opening a new location in Johnstown, CO.

Cart abandonment emails

Cart abandonment emails are sent to potential customers who started the purchasing process but haven’t finished it. They might’ve added an item to their cart, left the checkout page, or made any other action that triggered the start of the purchasing process.

According to Baynard Institute, 70.19% of online shopping carts are abandoned.

By sending out cart abandonment emails, you can convert some of those into sales.

Let’s look at an example from Custom Neon, a supplier of LED neon light signs. They have an online tool where customers can create their custom neon signs and add them to their carts.

If the customer doesn’t complete the purchase, Custom Neon can remind them about the designs they created. Like this:

Lululemon enhances this approach by including images of the products customers left in their carts:

Win-back email campaigns

As you’ve probably guessed, win-back email campaigns are designed to re-engage inactive (dormant) subscribers and customers.

You can segment your dormant contacts in several ways. For example:

• Subscribers who haven’t purchased anything recently
• Subscribers who open your emails, but don’t interact with any of the content
• Subscribers who haven’t opened your emails recently, but used to in the past

A successful win-back campaign can re-activate dormant subscribers.

It’s a good practice to remove those who remain unengaged to keep your email list clean.

Let’s see some examples.

Kenko Tea, a matcha green tea brand, sends out win-back emails to subscribers who haven’t purchased in a while. Creatively asking them: “time for a refill?” and providing them with a special discount code.

Another food brand, Sourse, offered their subscribers who had never bought their products a discount code. They named the code “GOODBYE” and stated that the subscriber won’t receive emails after this one unless they purchase something.

Personalized product recommendations

You can send out personalized product recommendations to your subscribers based on their behavior in your online store or interactions with your emails.

For example:

• Products similar or complementary to the ones they purchased before
• Items similar to the ones they added to their carts and abandoned
• Products similar to the ones they click through in your emails

By sending customized emails based on interests and behavior, you’re likely to have a higher conversion rate than when sending out generic emails to entire subscriber lists.

Let’s look at examples.

Sephora sends a post-purchase email featuring tips for using the product along with related product recommendations.

Open Table, a restaurant reservation service, sends dining recommendations to their customers based on the places customers previously booked through their platform.

Finally, Williams Sonoma recommends product categories based on the most recent purchase.

You’ve likely encountered similar emails post-purchase, as they are one of the most common and effective targeted email marketing strategies.

Birthday emails

Everyone likes to receive gifts on their birthdays, and so do your customers. By sending out a “happy birthday” email with a perk (a discount code or a freebie), you’ll evoke a positive emotion that your customers will continue associating with your brand.

Here’s a great example from Monica Vinader in which they offer a discount code to their customers to treat themselves on their birthday:

Drizly, an alcohol ordering & delivering platform, goes an extra step and congratulates a half-birthday. This is a great way to get your customers' eyes on your brand because you’re the only one who’ll celebrate their half-birthday. As they also state in their email: your family didn’t even know it was today!

Anniversary emails

Similar to birthday emails, you can also send anniversary ones. For the anniversary of your brand, or the anniversary of customer’s first interaction with you (their first purchase or the date when they subscribed to your newsletter).

Let’s see examples.

DAVIDsTEA sent an email to celebrate their brand’s anniversary, but this email is still highly personalized for the customer. It includes information about the date and location of their first interaction and how much tea they purchased (enough to outweigh 3 chipmunks)!

Or you can celebrate customers’ anniversaries like Busuu, a language learning platform, does. In this example, they’re giving out a 60% discount for their premium plan for this user’s three-month anniversary.

How to create a targeted email campaign in Getsitecontrol (4 easy steps)

Step 1: Define your goals and campaigns

In this article, we showed you several types of targeted email marketing campaigns. You might’ve noticed how different they are from each other.

That’s why it’s important to define your goal and choose the type of campaign you want to run before you start creating contact segments and designing emails.

Knowing what you want to achieve will help you lay out the next steps and find the right way to get there.

For example, if you want to run a win-back campaign, you’ll need to segment your list based on customers’ interactions with your previous emails. But if you’re setting up a cart abandonment sequence, that information doesn’t apply to you. And the emails will vary drastically.

Start with what you want to achieve, for example:

• Reactivate inactive subscribers
• Recover abandoned carts
• Clean your email list
• Increase sales

And so on.

Based on the goal you choose, pick a type of campaign that’ll help you get there.

Here’s how:

• Reactivate inactive subscribers -> Craft a win-back email
• Recover abandoned carts -> Create a cart abandonment sequence
• Clean your email list -> Delete those who ignored the win-back email
• Increase sales -> Send out personalized product recommendations

Step 2: Identify the data you need for the campaign

Once you have a goal and campaign in mind, think about the data you’ll need to create a segment of subscribers who should receive the email.

For example, if you’re selling jewelry, you can send a list of bestsellers from the golden jewelry collection to those who have shown interest in this metal.

How do you identify subscribers who are interested in golden jewelry?

You can either segment those who’ve clicked through the links to such pieces, or you can ask about people’s preferences right when you invite them to join your list.

Geolocation, email opens, and clicks are automatically collected data, but actual interests and preferences are better gathered during sign-up or checkout. From there, you can use field mapping to tag contacts accordingly.

Step 3: Segment your contacts

Now, let’s create contact segments in your EMS.

We’ll walk you through how to do this in Getsitecontrol, but this process is quite similar in other tools.

Log into your account (or create an account and import your contacts).

In the left-hand menu, click Contacts > Segments.

Next, click + Create segment

Suppose you want to target customers in Spain who have been on your list longer than a year but haven’t opened an email in the last 90 days.

Click + Add condition > Country.

Type Spain, then click Done.

Click + Add condition > Date added.

Choose the option “earlier than X days ago,” and type 365 in the Type value field.

And for our last condition, click + Add condition > Broadcasts > Last date opened.

Choose the option “earlier than X days ago,” and type 90 in the Type value field.

This is a list of contacts that fulfill the criteria of your segmentation.

Click Save & Close.

Your segmentation is now saved and you can use it to send out win-back emails later on.

In a similar manner, in Getsitecontrol, you can build segments of subscribers who have:

• Opened or didn’t open a specific email
• Clicked through a specific link in an email
• Have certain product preferences (indicated upon signup)
• and so on.

Step 4: Craft a great email

As a next step, you need to create an email that gets the attention you want.

Begin with an engaging subject line that compels customers to click.

The company Sourse, one of the examples we mentioned earlier in the article, uses this line as the subject of their email:

This subject line is direct and lets the customer know what they’ll get if they open the email.

Your subject line can wow your subscribers, but that doesn’t mean your email can be subpar. Continue delighting them with an awesome email.

Here are some tips for creating a delightful email:

• Personalize: Use the customers’ first names in the subject line and at the beginning of your email and make sure the email speaks to them directly.

• Show the benefits: Talk about what the customer will gain from your offer. You can remind them about your unique selling point and present other perks.

• Choose attention-grabbing images: Help them visualize your brand and offer by using a beautiful design and relevant, high-quality images or GIFs.

• Add a clear call to action: Include a clear and direct CTA that tells the subscribers what you want them to do (visit your site, go back to their cart, buy something, etc.)

• Include unsubscribe option: Always end your email with an option to unsubscribe from your email list.

Once you send emails, it’s important to keep track of your progress and iterate based on the results you get. You can double-down on the strategies that give you the best results and discontinue those that don’t work that well.

It’s time to expand your marketing strategy with targeted emails

Targeted email marketing is a powerful strategy to enhance your email metrics, brand perception, and — most importantly — sales.

Don’t let the sheer volume of different options stop you from starting to create your first segmentations and automations. Once set up, they’ll work in the background, allowing you to build new ideas and campaigns on top.

And if you’re looking for an intuitive email marketing platform to get started, try Getsitecontrol which can support you along the way with segmenting your audience, crafting beautiful emails, and setting up automated workflows.