Steve Hamm — April 16, 2018 Whether it was from the perspective of a subscriber or a marketer, you’ve likely discovered by now that campaigns that “blast” customers with messages are ineffective. Total volume of emails doesn’t mean anything if the content is generic and your list is unsegmented.
Here’s how to fix that problem in six steps:
Create multiple campaigns
There’s no law that says you can only run one email campaign at a time. Sometimes it helps to create multiple campaigns so you can clearly separate your goals, subscribers, and content.
Segment your list
The number one way to make sure you don’t blast subscribers with messages is to segment your email list. This way, you can create subgroups based on demographics, interests, and behavior.
According to this Forbes article, switching from blasts to segmented campaigns can have a drastic impact on your open rates:
“When 2,000 MailChimp users were sampled in 2017, the results were clear. Those who sent 11,000 segmented campaigns to almost 9 million recipients had a higher open rate than those who sent the same email to everyone, regardless of their interest. When they went from general blasts to segmented email campaigns, they saw opens increase by 31% and clicks increase by 95%.”
Having one giant email might work at first for very small businesses, but it isn’t sustainable. The more subscribers you add, the more pressure there will be to segment your list. Don’t fight it.
Flexible design
You don’t need to create every design from scratch. In fact, it’s best to work with flexible templates so that you can easily edit elements and move them around. Make sure your emails are responsive so that they look nice on mobile devices.
Focus on the engaged users
Many marketers focus on the least engaged users since they think the engaged ones don’t need any further assistance. In reality, it’s a much better use of your time to move your engaged subscribers through the sales funnel as opposed to waking the dormant ones up.
This Marketing Land article explains why it’s best to focus on the engaged users. According to the article, you can ask if they want to receive specialized deals:
“Marketers should keep an eye out for subscribers who consistently engage with emails. High engagement may provide your team with the opportunity to reach out and directly ask what level of engagement these interested subscribers are comfortable with and if they’d be comfortable with receiving specialized deals.”
Sending specialized deals is a great way to move qualified leads through the sales funnel. This is way more efficient than spending time on leads who have no interest in your messages.
Automate your campaign
It’s understandable that email marketing isn’t always on your mind. It’s not an excuse for forgetting to send your newsletter out, however.
By automating your campaign, you can set everything up in advance and gleefully forget about your email marketing duties. This makes sure you abide by a schedule and keep subscribers engaged.
Generate performance reports
Trial-and-error is a huge part of email marketing. The only way you’ll learn is by trying new things and seeing how your campaign performs as a result.
Too many businesses and marketers look at their sales numbers to determine if their campaign is effective. In reality, there are many factors affecting your sales that you can’t see or control. To evaluate your email marketing performance, you should focus on metrics like your open rate to see how subscribers are responding to your messages. Ideally, the program or application you use will generate these reports for you so all you have to do is analyze them.
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