Key Elements of A Successful Email Marketing Strategy

so what are the key elements of a
successful email marketing strategy
Daniel
key thing is to provide value in your
content if you send out an email saying
look at us we're great no one cares no
Kevin's always telling me this no one
cares no one cares come on so it's
harder it's about providing value in
your content now that could be content
marketing is in here's something useful
it could be special offers if I have
specifically said I want special offers
of this type but don't be that person
that's just throwing stuff out there and
hoping it's going to stick at the right
time you've really got to provide value
in your content and it does need to be
100 pieces of content it might be
there's one really great thing but it
has to provide enough value that I'm
going to look at it and it's going to
make me want to go back and I know from
all the newsletters I subscribe to
there's probably three that I always
read because I know I'll get some value
from it that's that's what you need to
do and it's easier said than done but
you have to focus on the value so what
about frequency of emails can you send
too many too little you can definitely
send too many you can actually send too
little as well if people want more so
the best thing to do is ask people what
frequency you want on it when they're
subscribing do you want this weekly
monthly daily and and see what they want
the other thing you can do is you can
start by sending out maybe monthly or
weekly and then you start to run up a
little bit and what you want to really
keep a really close eye on is your
unsubscribes and your open rate and
click through rates to see actually am I
sending so much that I've burnt people
and what you really don't want to do is
get to the point where you've people
have just switched off to you and it's
going to the newsletter folder and
they're they're never looking at it from
their point of view so what about the
ratio of commercial and then
non-commercial content
I think that what you should do and
there's different arguments about this
is if you go 100 non-commercial content
I hear some useful stuff every time and
only sending out commercial content
here's our stuff buy it when the email's
been triggered so if for example you
come to my sales page you have
signed up for my emails before and then
you stay on that page more than a minute
and a half I might say I'm going to
trigger an email to you saying look at
this we've got this really great thing
you might be interested in otherwise
really sticking towards just trying to
provide value because if I do that every
time I send an email I've got the chance
of getting you back to my website that's
very much a B2B strategy though I think
it works right I've worked with a lot of
b2c organizations and actually I've
learned that people enjoy shopping right
it's fun but it can't be the only show
in town if that's all you do is send out
repeatedly desperate by our stuff by our
stuff right to everybody and it's one
size fits all that's not that's not cool
where I think it works a lot better is
when you do a similar similar thing
where actually taking a look at your
data and you're triggering emails off
the back of what people have actually
looked at so you learn a little bit
about your audience so be looking at
this okay let's give them a great offer
on that then that's great that's a real
sweet spot because it feels that much
more more personalized so I think yes
there's a is it a balance yeah there is
a balance right brilliant actually it
does differ from audience to audience
but I completely agree with you down and
on B2B I think that's a great strategy
we've seen that work really well for for
Target internet I'm just thinking about
applying that to some of my like
e-commerce get 100 and they'd go nuts if
I suggested yeah never never talk about
the product again exactly and I think
that's it and it's actually saying
give you the things you want provide
value because I know what you're
interested in customize it and so on as
well I'm just trying to find a ratio but
I think there has to be a ratio it's
like if it's 100 sales it won't work so
what about giving people the opportunity
to reply to your emails like pet peeve
is that it says do not reply it's like
that's just saying we're so lazy in the
setup of RIT that you can't respond to
this email or we don't want to hear from
you normally those those emails start
with we really care about you as a
customer you're right it don't reply to
hear back from me yeah I'm rude what
we've done quite often is say if you
reply to this we will read it we will
respond to you yeah and it suddenly goes
from being a broadcast channel to a to a
two-way channel from that point of view
and I think that's the power with an
email it's making it more of a social
channel right you know we'll be used to
this now you know Web 2.0 happened quite
a few years ago and it was exciting
because there was two-way Communication
email can be that as well and you know
when you start doing like that it comes
alive and magic stuff starts to happen
and so how does email deliverability
come into all of this so do you know
what it's really hard to get your emails
in the actual inbox in front of your
customers right and never underestimate
that so there's lots of simple things
you can do just use a dedicated email
service provider you know somebody like
MailChimp or campaign monitor or direct
response in any of those services are
set up for doing this and increasingly
our crms have this kind of functionality
built into it but you need that
infrastructure because if you don't have
that your email is just gonna like fall
at the First Fence then the other thing
now is it's this one size fits all kind
of broadcast and and no reply emails
like really like flies in the face of
this it's actually you need your
audience that you're sending emails to
be to be well engaged if they're not the
inbox inspectors are places like Gmail
and Yahoo mail and and Outlook and
Hotmail these places you know they're
looking at everybody you send an email
to Louise and if a high proportion of
those never even open it then they score
you like you're judged like yeah this
this sender Louise she's not very Goods
like because her audience she sends to
tends to ignore it and the higher
proportion you have ignoring on each of
these platforms the bigger the chances
you end in the other stuff in box that
no one ever looks at and that's you know
that's where email campaigns go to die
so it's really important actually sounds
counter-intuitive really important that
we work really hard to make sure
everybody on that list is engaged and
regularly you know have those automated
cleanups that's on a regular basis say
okay the systems notice you haven't
opened these emails okay let's just send
a re-engagement email to check that they
do still want to get it I think that's
really really really good
um and and yeah it comes back to
engaging content you know if you're
sending the wrong things to the wrong
people all the time then they're gonna
they're gonna switch off and even
although they haven't unsubscribed
they'll never be getting your your
messages and it's not like we have a you
know on social media have like a boost
you can pay to play don't have that with
email once you start ending in that
other box then you're kind of dead to me
I might as well have unsubscribed so
those cleanup processes and yes it's
going to mean smaller lists but actually
what that's going to do is it's going to
give you much higher levels of
Engagement the email inbox inspectors
are going to see and that's the secret
to always getting getting delivered you
know that and you know ask questions
interact with your customers again just
like a you know on Facebook we know that
if we interact with the Facebook page
we're probably going to see a lot more
of what they get it's the same thing on
email it's working in a similar similar
way I think what's different is there's
no one company dominating it you know
it's just lots of different different
inbox inspectors are doing their similar
thing but you need to get that
engagement Therefore your content needs
to be really good therefore you need to
really mine that data on who's
interested in what and start leveraging
on that so make sure you're providing
value throughout