Email marketing still reigns supreme for most businesses when it comes to ROI. The funny part is how many businesses are not taking full advantage of the medium. Email is a channel and should not be seen as a strategy unto itself, it is just another way to communicate to the customer. But because of its low cost and effective targeting capabilities, it is a channel that should be at the top of most companies priority list.
1) Map out the customer flow
Once upon a time I worked on the growth engineering team at Twitter. We were tasked with building something that could turn new signup users into die-hard Tweeters. The secret sauce to user activation was…email! But before we knew when to use email, we had to map out the Twitter user journey.
This is key to a marketing automation. The first step of a campaign is to identify the goals for the campaign. After that, the visual mapping of the workflow will save hours of time and allow for better if/then scenario processes to take place within the campaign. When done visually, it also is easier to see pitfalls and mistakes. This may seem like double work, but it is an essential step.
2) Master the balance of building your list, while not asking for too much
You’re ready to begin building your email list and customer base. You’ve also heard that the more info you have on a customer, the better. Besides, how are you supposed to create highly personalized email campaigns without any data on a user? Before you start pushing sign up forms with 20 form fields to all of your website visitors, you must first understand that customer intelligence should be built over time.
I am a big fan of finding out 1 thing about your customer in every interaction. Transactional data about what your customers are buying is the best information to have, but also asking your customers a question with each interaction is not time consuming for them and through time will build a plethora of information for you which then can be used to further segment your customers. Be careful what you ask. If you ask something specific about behaviors, your customer may expect you to use this information right away and if you don't, they may become disenfranchised.
3) Embrace marketing automation
People say marketing automation isn’t personal and ruins your brand reputation with robot-like communication. I’m going to argue that it actually makes your communication more personal because it can be used to send messages based on individual behavior. Marketing automation makes it so that no two people receive the same messages.
This is a must in my book. There is no better way to have targeted, individualized communication with large sets of customers without it. Marketing automation tools should be a fundamental piece of the marketing technology. It allows for the management of the customer, regardless of the channel. It makes multi-channel communication possible. I believe this is the center for all outbound communication, regardless of the channel.
4) Offer value with every touch (Eat24)
You don’t need a reason to call grandma, but you should have a reason for sending an email to your subscribers. Promotional blasts are the bread and butter of ecommerce companies, and I’m not saying they’re a bad practice, since they do generate revenue. But, before you send another marketing campaign, you should always ask yourself, “Will my customers care?” The answer of course should always be, “Yes!”.
I worked with a company that did an email blast every 2 weeks regardless of if there was anything new to communicate. The offer that was sent was usually the same offer with a different twist.
Not only does this approach start to feel the same, which will lead to customers ignoring the email, it also doesn't create a sense of urgency for the customer. If there is always a timed offering and it is always the same offer, customers will not feel the need to reply to the call of action. They will start to learn there will be this new offer next week so maybe I'll just wait until then. This limits the effectiveness of your communications.
5) Recognize lapsed users and bring them back (Memebox)
Customers sometimes leave. While some loss is inevitable, others are absolutely preventable. A bad marketer doesn’t know who has left or who is about to leave. A good marketer recognizes the signs of churning and targets those users with the perfect message to bring them back.
The best time to market to a customer is before they become inactive. Once a customer is inactive or has left, it is usually too late and those customers are very hard to regain. It is very important to identify customer that are about to churn or are changing their buying habits in a negative fashion.
For instance, a customer may purchase from you with a frequency of once a month, however over the past 3 months they have not purchased anything. Lets say in this instance your active customer database is purchases within 12 months. If someone who consistently purchases every month, but has not in the last 3 months, you as a marketer have to change your communications with this customer. This customer is in danger of churning and you can't wait for 9 more months before they become inactive to recognize this. At that point it will be too late.
6) Perpetually tinker with A/B testing
Email campaigns, like fine art or software, is never finished. There will always be something else you can do to improve the performance of a campaign. When looking for an email platform, find one that allows you to A/B test any part of your email.
Marketing automation campaigns are never finished. They are constantly evolving no matter what the situation is. Testing should be a standard part of all your campaigns. It is important to remember that a baseline needs to be established before the testing takes place. Also, be careful not to overlap tests that may have influence on results at the same time. You always want to make sure you understand what changes drove what results. If there are too many tests and changes at once, there is no way to possibly understand the impact of the tests.
I would add a number 7, analysis
Find yourself a good, easy to use business intelligence tool and analyze the performance of these email campaigns. Create many different attributes of your customer. Slice and dice the data to look for opportunities. Identify groups of customers that aren't performing up to the standards of others, these are the customers that become new segments to target with different communication and content strategies. This also is a must in my book.