What is My Email Marketing Missing? Getting Back to Basics

From personalized subject lines to custom content videos, emails are getting flashier. After all, marketers are continually looking to improve results with an edge over the competition. There’s always a new tactic, technology or theory that promises to drive more opens, clicks and conversions. The problem is that in our zeal to find “the next big thing,” we often lose sight of what really matters: putting together the right foundational elements that will drive sales consistently and predictably.

Here are four basics every successful email marketing strategy should include. By getting back to these basics, you can rest assured that you’ve built a strong foundation to support all that flashy content.

A Message with Value

Matthew Collis at Inman News says it perfectly: “Great email marketing isn’t about selling – it’s about providing value.” Your audience’s time is simply too valuable to waste with spammy, self-serving ads, no matter how cool they look.

These people have already demonstrated their trust in you when they opted in to your list. Prove that you deserve this trust (as well as their time and attention) by providing an exchange of valuable information. This engagement will lead to deeper relationships that will ultimately drive more sales.

List Segmentation

The more relevant your content is to a subscriber, the more likely that subscriber is to open and engage with your email. Segmenting your list allows you to tailor your messages to the specific audience at hand. The trick is to find the segmentation formula that’s right for your list.

A study by MailChimp reviewed approximately 11,000 segmented campaigns and found that segmentation by customer type, zip code or job title increased open rates by nearly 19% whereas segmenting by subscriber interests increased opens by only 2%. When it comes to email marketing, there is no one-size-fits-all. Keep testing until you find the solution that’s right for your list.

Email Personalization

Although easy answers can be hard to come by in email marketing, email personalization can often be your silver bullet. In a report by Experian Marketing Services, personalized promotional emails lifted transaction rates and revenue per email by an astonishing six times over that of non-personalized emails. Surprisingly, though, 70% of brands fail to personalize their emails which means they’re potentially leaving huge amounts of money on the table.

And remember: Personalization doesn’t need to be complicated in order to be effective. Keep it warm to keep the “person” in personalization. In other words, make sure your email sounds as if it was written by a real person for a real person. No flash, just warmth.

Triggered Responses

Speaking of warm, who doesn’t appreciate a warm welcome when they walk into a store for the first time? You can treat your new subscribers to that same warm welcome when they join your list. Or send a cheerful reminder when they abandon their shopping cart. Or make a purchase. (You get the idea.)

Triggered email campaigns round out your overall strategy by ensuring you’re reaching your audience at precisely the right time based on the actions they take. The best way to implement triggered emails is to leverage real-time data to ensure your emails are always spot-on in their delivery.

Knowing how to implement this data is also key to engaging your list. For insights into how to creatively use subscriber data to boost your email communications, download “3 Ways to Use Subscriber Data to Modernize Your Email Marketing” today!

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