paramore|redd speaks
Email Marketing – our thoughts as we move into 2007
(0) Comments | Posted: Wednesday October 18, 2006 in email, The Pink Boa Blog - by Hannah Paramore
By now many companies have begun to test and use email as a marketing tool. We’ve seen a good bit of success with our clients who use email and have learned a lesson or two along the way. As we roll into ’07 here’s what we will be focusing on with our clients.
By now many companies have begun to test and use email as a marketing tool. We’ve seen a good bit of success with our clients who use email and have learned a lesson or two along the way. As we roll into ’07 here’s what we will be focusing on with our clients.
More testing. Better testing.
We intend to test with every campaign but often in the press of the moment we resort to just another subject line test. For our clients who are not experiencing open rate problems, we are pushing for response testing tied more closely to the goal of the campaign. So we’ll be encouraging offer, creative, and CTA testing.
Make it a campaign, not just a blast.
Sending one email is not a campaign. Sending an anchor email (the first in a series with the main CTA included) with a possibility of 2 triggers (emails that are sent to people depending on what they click on – or don’t click on) is a campaign. It’s the best way to learn which offers will get your audience to do what you want them to do.
Use what we learn from the tests.
This sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well, how many focus groups have you been a part of that offered good insight that was immediately discounted or altogether ignored? Same thing happens with email testing results. Dig deep to learn from the test and then make the results of the test set a new bar for future campaign performance. Actually do what the test said you should do. There’s an idea!
Add a real-time email contact strategy to the campaign strategy.
Email is great as a scheduled part of your overall marketing campaign. But it can also work wonders on a more real-time basis. Create a welcome email that is sent automatically when a new prospect signs up to receive your emails. Then another one sent 2 weeks later with an offer. Create an abandoned shopping cart trigger that serves dynamic content based on what was in the cart when it was abandoned. Yes, it can be done.
While I know that email marketing is even more sophisticated than the things I’ve mentioned today, for the majority of businesses, just putting these tactics into action will kick their campaigns up a notch. What are you planning to do with your email campaigns in ’07? I’d like to know…
