Inboxes today are overflowing with content of dubious interest to the recipient. Are you guilty of adding to the spam factor, or are you truly sharing something that your audience cares about? Each time you send an email to your list, you’re forming an impression of your organization. That impression could be “Wonder where the unsubscribe button is…?” or it could be “That was great info! Where do I click to find out more…?”. Obviously, the second option is the best choice, but how can you refresh your email strategy — and ultimately increase your bottom line?
Understanding the Customer Journey
With over 281 billion emails sent each day, how can you guarantee that your message is going to cut through the clutter? You have to be extremely targeted in your messaging, which requires a deep understanding of customer needs and where each audience member is in their buying process. If you are a long-standing customer with a particular company, wouldn’t you be a tad perturbed to receive an email offer that provided a hefty discount to NEW users? You’re a devoted customer, where’s your discount?!? This type of marketing fail is one reason that individuals tend to opt-out of receiving information from eCommerce retailers, so be sure you’re appropriately segmenting your audience instead of sending a blast of messages to your entire list.
The Big Business of Email
There’s no question: email marketing is big business, with Campaign Monitor releasing figures for 2018 that marketers are recognizing returns of up to $44 in sales for every $1 spent on email marketing and a whopping 4400% ROI. This kind of opportunity needs to be carefully optimized, meaning you’ll need to gather information from your customers and be sure it’s fully integrated into your marketing systems. That could mean everything from a comprehensive marketing automation/customer relationship management suite such as SalesForce or HubSpot to stitching together data from a variety of disparate platforms.
Refreshing Your Email Strategy
Content marketing is continually growing and shifting, as organizations determine what activates prospects to become customers — and what causes long-time customers to fade into the distance. Refreshing your marketing strategy starts at the end: what are you trying to accomplish? For instance:
- Subscription companies may be more interested in retaining customers, meaning a strong onboarding and ongoing communication strategy is crucial to their success.
- Large ticket items or services businesses need to educate consumers before expecting to make a sale. In this instance, a drip campaign that includes action items, video and whitepapers may be your best strategy.
- eCommerce leaders are always looking for clever new ways to offer sales and create follow-ups after the sale to deepen the engagement. Keep in mind that your order confirmation and shipping emails should also have a marketing message or an upsell to maximize your revenue.
There are no set-it-and-forget-it methods for email marketing that works. You can create a strategy and implement it, but you must continually measure the results and make adjustments when you see that your prospects are no longer responding to a particular messaging set.
Email marketing is an inexpensive and extremely valuable way to share more information with your audience, but it’s crucial to get your strategy right before your audience tunes you out or unsubscribes. Need some assistance with defining a content strategy that works? The content and marketing strategists at WriterAccess.com can help analyze your current communication, work with you to define new strategies and even implement the recommendations!
Myca A. brings 12 years of director-level marketing, sales and communications experience. She has worked with all sizes and types of organizations from GE Capital Corporation and a $100MM non-profit down to a small local promotional products manufacturer. Her experience in publishing, process improvement, change management, leadership, finance, communications and marketing give her a broad background to draw upon when crafting compelling content.
