Happy Monday marketers, and welcome to the first full workweek of autumn. Let’s get the new week – and the new season – off to an informative start with some email marketing news. Here you go:
Email marketers should ‘push,’ not ‘shove’
Email is “the greatest push channel of them all,” the “original disruptive channel” and “second to none for customer preference and ROI,” writes Kath Pay at Only Influencers. But despite those attributes, she is worried: “My greatest fear is that we’re still not doing it right even after all these years and that we’re taking this strength of the email channel for granted.”
“It’s easy to get the message wrong – to use the hard sell and to speak in terms that don’t relate to customers’ interests, needs and preferences,” Pay continues. “Yes, email is a push channel. But recipients don’t like having things shoved at them through irrelevant messages, messages that don’t recognize them as loyal customers, messages that don’t deliver any meaning or value.” She suggests that marketers adopt a “customer-centric, customer-service focus that aligns with your brand strategy and voice.” She recommends it as an approach that can make your messages “welcome additions in the inbox, keeping your brand top of mind just by virtue of being seen there.”
Find those errors before you hit ‘send’
It seems counterintuitive, but Chad White, writes on the Litmus blog that finding few or no errors in your emails may not necessarily be a positive thing: it may mean that you have to look harder for your mistakes. The post follows-up a survey that found that only half of the marketers who responded had sent an apology or correction email in the previous 12 months. But close examination of the results yielded an interesting discovery – the brands that saw no need for apologies or corrections were not error-free; rather, they were unsuccessful at detecting mistakes.
“Sure, the marketers that sent apology and correction emails definitely had more sophisticated and complex email programs – and complexity certainly can lead to more errors,” White writes. “But they also had much better safeguards in place than marketers who weren’t sending any apologies.” The conclusion: “Most marketers are making apology-worth mistakes, but only half of them are aware of the mistakes they are making.” White provides tips for marketers to catch those pesky error that include using a “pre-send checklist,” adding additional reviewers and previewing messages in a wide range of email clients.
Five tips for successful list management
“Properly managing and maintaining your contact lists is a critical, yet often overlooked component of effective email marketing,” writes Tim Asimos at Business 2 Community. “Once you’ve grown an organic list of quality contacts, you’ll want to manage it to ensure the integrity of the list moving forward.” Asimos offers five tips for successful list management: send a welcome email to new subscribers; use subscription management; perform proper list hygiene; implement re-engagement campaigns and eliminate unengaged subscribers; and make it easy to unsubscribe.
“Growing your lists the right way – using permission-based subscription tactics as opposed to purchasing or renting list – is the starting point for a solid email marketing program. But it can’t stop there, as proper list management is essential for ensuring ongoing email marketing success,” Asimov concludes.
Transforming your email marketing requires change management
“You know you need to move your email program away from relying on broadcast messages and simple segmentation,” writes Loren McDonald at MediaPost’s Email Insider.” But achieving a highly automated, dynamic program takes more than buying the right technology. You also have to manage change effectively throughout the process, from buy-in to implementation to long-term success.” McDonald provides eight-step change management process specifically for email marketers: create a sense of urgency, build a powerful coalition, create a vision for change, communicate the vision, remove obstacles, create short-term wins, build on your changes, and anchor the change in your corporate culture.
“Change is hard, but it has to happen if you want to transform your email program to one that is more sophisticated, efficient and successful. Managing the change process will help you stay on track and contribute to your eventual success,” he writes.