Rejuvenate your email marketing strategy.
To consider the course forward, it is important to reflect on what made email marketing attractive and successful. About 15 years ago, it became common for businesses to use email for direct marketing messages. In general, the format was replacing direct mail that was a slow, cumbersome, and costly production. Email marketing was practically free and instant. Of course, there was a novelty to the medium, which is usually good for any campaign. The newness also meant that the distribution lists were targeted. The campaigns were not segmented by advanced list quarry protocol or well-designed response algorithm. Marketers were merely hindered by the actual manpower required to collect email addresses and build lists, often by phone and in siloed CRM databases or spreadsheets. Naturally, massive lists became an important boast as casting the widest net produced growing results. Adding contacts to this list has been a primary mission of sales and marketing ever since.
In recent years, many organizations realized a plateau in email marketing results and seek new analysis to improve stale strategies. Most intuit that trends are cycling faster, that more competition exists, and that device compatibility is essential. There are advanced automation tools and unified CRM is infiltrating the most discrete industries and segregated organizations.
Automation, increased bandwidth, and advanced email platforms have smoothed transitions between email and connected deliverables. Modern experience-oriented audiences have relinquished precious privacy and expect more intuitive, customized, and dynamic campaigns in return. Prove respect by deploying targeted, ideally timed messages to engage prospects. Strategy, design, and tools must be renovated to garner new attention.
Consumers traverse the online and offline worlds effortlessly and expect their experience to be consistent and relevant. In this cross-channel world, integration tools, and service platforms deploy and measure omnichannel campaigns. Organizational plans should support offer management, delivery, and performance for every existing and prospective client to drive revenue and enhance customer experiences.
Email marketing still offers better ROI than other channels. “Email has a median ROI of 122% – over 4x higher than other marketing formats including social media, direct mail, and paid search.” DATA & MARKETING ASSOCIATION & DEMAND METRIC and “86% of professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.” HUBSPOT
But, the strategy is more complicated, and many have responded by increasing frequency and including more recipients.
Initiate a refreshed strategy with competitive analysis to understand what your peers are doing and consider content, voice, style, and design. Chart what is appealing and anything that does not suit the organization’s brand or that prospects and subscribers might find objectionable. Identify the audiences and develop the objectives for internal and external messaging. Seek data to educate the assumptions made in this analysis. This data may be from existing databases or marketing platforms. Also, consider external reporting to support the analysis. Outline campaign objectives, key performance indicators (KPIs), and design the tests to measure progress.
Keep your emails interesting and consistent with the greater content marketing strategy throughout the year by coordinating with an umbrella content calendar. Consider current media for inspiration and maintain relevance with major news stories and industry events.
Frequency is a critical and finding ideal frequency is challenging efforts to maximize response. Excess stimulates unsubscribes, increases indifference among users, and may damage a sender’s reputation. Subscribers, prospects, and clients should receive limited communication to avoid fatigue. Meanwhile, every business loathes missing sales opportunities as easy as sending a well-timed email. Determine whether simultaneous initiatives may create competing messages and guard against excess.
Coordinate a consistent voice and branding using email templates, images, landing pages and websites with consistent attributes, making a seamless experience for contacts. See how you can use data to trigger some messages. Actions like service agreement renewals, visiting a product page, or other signals that may present opportunities to serve your core audience. List each occasion in the client experience that should be enhanced by email.
If your organization develops new business through calls & person-to-person introductions, arm the team and reward good CRM participation with this touch point that sets you up for a trusting relationship by presenting value with no strings attached to new prospects.
