First came apple privacy opens throwing a wrench in open rate data. Then came a surge of bot clicks muddying engagement rates. For brands basing their "email marketing campaign strategy" purely on these metrics, it's becoming more apparent that this isn't actually a proper strategy.
To survive and thrive in the new inbox environment, there needs to be a major shift in how things are done. Sending and hoping things work is so 2010s.
Here's my take on how you can future-proof your email marketing campaign strategy.
As much as open rates are not the most accurate, they're still an indicator. Same goes for click rates. But question, how exactly are you learning from what you see in your campaign dashboard?
Truth is, most people aren't. They're just telling themselves they are. We used to be that way too, until we got serious about engagement data.
If you can use this data to keep your list clean, you stay out of blacklists and save yourself a fair bit in ESP billing with fewer sends per month.
Reason for the "no overlap" is so we can see exactly how each segment reacts.
Having a blended 180 day engaged segment bunches the first 5 segments above, all together.
You might have heard me talk about this before, and I'm going to talk about it again. Growing your list is important - you always want to have new blood flowing through.
But what good is a big email list if they don't convert into paying customers?
Because if you know people are going to convert within X days, you want to capitalize on that and maximize your chances of conversion. This might mean...
These might or might not work for every brand, test at your own risk.
Compare 2 people who are signed up to your email newsletter. The first person finds your emails relevant. They call this CONTENT. The second person finds your emails irrelevant. They call this SPAM.
Funny huh.
So it's not so much about the frequency, less about whether it's "on-brand". Nor is it about timing of send, least of all the subject line.
A proper email marketing campaign strategy revolves about relevancy.
That's why it will be ever more important to
Because this is the ONLY way it respects the customer journey.
Email marketing, heck, any form of marketing can only work if they meet the customer where they are - matching need, when timing and price are right.
When do you send a product-focused campaign?
When do you send an engagement campaign?
When do you send social proof campaigns?
When do you send a promotional campaign?
After speaking to hundreds of marketers, the common answer I get is "To be honest, I don't know."
The only way to do this is to:
This is part of our Email Revenue Forecasting exercise that we do for partner brands.
If you'd like us to help you with this and create a proper email marketing campaign strategy, book a call with my team here.
People opt-in to your email list with an objective. Most of them, because they want to buy. So the content they receive needs to help them get closer to a purchase decision.
But the moment your first email hits them, they start to have doubts. It's natural; purely because of the bad rep email newsletters have gotten over the years.
Okay... I just signed up. I barely know you. Why should I keep receiving emails I might not care about, unless I'm seeking out a deal?
And if your business is growing with new cold prospects, most of your new subscribers will be thinking the same.
The way you can overcome this hurdle is to set the tone.
Because it tells the subscriber they are in control. It eases their mind. Email marketing shouldn't be something you do TO your subscribers. It's content FOR your susbcribers.
And if you don't deliver sufficient value, it's only right they get a chance to kick you out from their lives.
This is what it takes to develop a proper email marketing campaign strategy. No fancy tactics. It's the principle of it that most marketers don't even get. And it's the reason why you're not getting the results you're getting.
(Humble brag: And this is the reason why we get the results we get too)
Follow these five suggestions, and your email marketing campaign strategy will be future-proof.
Have a blast (not batch and blast)!