It’s an age old issue; you set up your email marketing campaign a few years ago, times gone by and you start working on auto-pilot with it, you let everything get a little stale and jaded. You’re not getting the results you used to get. And you wonder why. Chances are it’s because you’re in an email marketing rut. If you want to get out of the email rut, and get back the amazing opening rates you used to get, you had best to come up with a plan to update and improve it.
How? I hear you ask… As always you have to go back to basics, with a fresh approach and a renewed zest to dazzle.
At least once a year you have to take the time to update technology, redesign your artwork, improve your calls to action (CTA) and optimise for all devices.
1) Update Technology
Are you still using the same provider that you were using five years ago, or even two years ago? If so, you might want to take a look at what’s out there that’s new and improved to figure out if it’s time to make a change. If you’re not changing provider take a close look at any new functions your provider is offering. You may have missed the email notifying you of their latest updates. It’s happened to me before.
2) Create New Designs
Every year you want to update your artwork to reflect the changing times as well as reflect your brand in such a way that your current customers as well as future customers take notice. You want to remain fresh, memorable and modern. Update your newsletter graphics, and maybe make a change in the look and feel of each newsletter that you send out. Creating new designs for your logo, or other art work will breathe new life into your email marketing campaigns and your business. Take note of the old adage:
[bctt tweet=”A change is as good as a rest” username=”VirtuosoPA”]
3) Improve Your CTAs
What worked a year ago might be old news today. As technology improves and people become more educated, you may need to try new ways to get your market to act upon your CTAs. Plus, it’s likely you have learned more too about what type of CTAs work best for your market. Revisit the CTAs you have in place now, and try to improve upon them so that you’ll get even better results. Here’s an excellent post by Precision Marketing which will help.
4) Optimise for Mobile
It’s way past time to optimise your email marketing for mobile. Most emails are now read with mobile devises. If your email marketing isn’t responsively designed, you’re likely missing out on most of your market. Your email marketing technology will no doubt have easy templates and designs that are responsive. Also think about the items you ask your audience to click through to see? Are they responsive? If not, they need to be.
5) Update Segmentation Strategy
Most people start out with segmenting their email marketing between buyers and non-buyers but you can go so much further with that. You can segment by product/service interest and device interaction. You will get a lot better return on investment the more you can segment your audience because it will enable you to deliver the best content to each audience.
6) Integrate Social Media
You probably already use social media in your marketing campaigns. But, do you have your email marketing integrated with social media in a way that allows your subscribers to help you get more subscribers, as well as help your subscribers join you on social media? You should be cross-promoting your email list with your social media to get the most results. If your audience is reading your emails and interacting with you on social media, you’ve got the best of all worlds and the most chances of conversions. I recently noticed that a new client of mine wasn’t doing this, they were treating social media and email as two separate entities. Since combining both their sales and social followers have increased.
7) Study Your Metrics
Nothing is done and finished until the admin is done and that includes your email marketing. You should study the metrics of your email marketing before and after each marketing campaign and then look at some things more thoroughly each time to find out what is working and what is not.
It may sound like drastic action to take, but if they aren’t interacting with your email, by opening it, then there is something wrong with the glue which bonds you together… your email. Chances are a reminder will be the light-bulb moment they need to start reading and interacting again and it may also give you fresh ideas to brighten up your content.
By keeping on top of these seven things you can actually get out of your email rut and stay out of it. Make plans to revisit these things every single year because as technology improves and changes, to stay on top you need to improve and change too.
