However, like anything else, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing correctly. As we dive headfirst into our 201 strategies and tactics, there are a few simple questions you can ask yourself to make your email marketing campaigns better than ever.
Who is reading this?
Firing out the same emails willy-nilly to your entire list of subscribers may seem like a time-efficient way of communicating your message, but we can assure you, it’s not. Being aware of your different segments and tailoring your content to hit each one is crucial to any successful campaign, and absolutely necessary to run automated or AB campaigns.
Before getting started, it’s imperative to identify your audience and organize them within your database (automated marketing services such as Mailchimp make fairly straightforward). By segmenting your audience into lists, you can send customized content that will be more engaging to particular segments. Deploying an email including a discount on a particular product is going to be much more appealing to your potential customers list than someone who just made a similar purchase. Segmenting as granularly as possible without thinning your lists to the point of rendering them ineffective is the goal, and finding that balance can be tricky. It varies from brand to brand, and from industry to industry, but generally speaking, basic demographics and the audience position within the sales funnel should be two metrics can give you a solid foundation.
What are our (clearly defined) goals?
A digital campaign can’t be successful without clearly defined goals that are recognized by everyone involved with the project. This may seem basic, but you might be surprised how many marketers, in their rush to push content out the door as quickly as possible, set vague objectives that ultimately hurt the project in the long run.
Say your goal is to increase sales. That’s great, but it doesn’t really help you from an email marketing perspective. Instead of putting a generic intention in place like that, think a bit more about how you can specify that a bit more. If your goal is to move more of Product A through your commerce platform, then you can feature it prominently in your email along with an offer that gives a percentage off. If the objective is to get more feet in your brick and mortar shop, share some photos of your store along with the benefits of your friendly sales staff. These may not be applicable to your business directly, but by being more specific with what you’re trying to accomplish, you’re much more likely to succeed.
What benefits are they getting from opening our email?
Are you thoroughly and genuinely excited about your brand and the product or services it offers? That’s amazing, but many times, the audience you’re trying to reach is either unfamiliar with or not interested in what you have to offer. It’s important to take a step back, and, objectively as possible, put yourself in the mindset of your audience to think about what could incentivize you enough to engage with the content of an email. Is it a discount code for a hot product? Interesting or informative content? This is crucial to determine before you even think about deploying an email.
It’s also key to remember that even if a reader is legitimately interested in your brand, you’re likely competing for extremely limited space in an inbox already inundated by content and offers from other brands, some possibly even competitors. Knowing that a constant stream of unwanted comment is going to lead to a wave of unsubscribes, it’s important to keep best practices in mind. General rules of email marketing best practices should still be at play, and what may be annoying to you will likely also be so to your customer. Empathize with the end user, and you will discover solutions.
Are you following best practices?
As touched upon above, there are certain commonly accepted best practices in running an email campaign. If you’re just starting out and possibly not familiar with these, there are several blogs online that can help you with basic email etiquette. But no matter where you are with your email marketing strategy, these basic principles will ring true. As we get Without going into too much detail, however, some general rules of thumb are:
• Don’t overwhelm your audience
• Make sure your audience actually wants to be your audience (only use emails that you’ve acquired legally, from people who know they signed up)
• Only share content that’s worth sharing (see above)
• Adjust your strategy based on your results
When have we last cleaned our Master List?
Oftentimes when we go through a period of success with our digital initiatives and are able to grow our database to a respectable size, or if a data list is purchased, it can often lead to a large and unruly list. Segmenting, as mentioned above, is a great way to organize your list before launching your next campaign to get the right content in front of the right people.
Before you do that, however, your first objective (as well as something to make a habit out of) is to clean your list. This means removing inactive or otherwise undesirable email addresses from your database. Ideally, this is something that should be happening after every campaign and whenever new entries are made. Realistically though, this is often a task that gets overlooked. To not take the time for this task is extremely unwise, however, as high bounce rates stemming from emails going to inactive or unwilling recipients can’t you booted from most major marketing automation platforms (as well as potential legal trouble. Moral of the story, just clean your list)
Services like NeverBounce are great for identifying and removing bad contacts from your list and making sure it’s ready to be utilized. It’s a great tool for regular list maintenance or if you find yourself having neglected your cleaning duties for too long.
Prodigal Company offers an array of email marketing and automated marketing services. For more information, click here.