Here are several excerpts from an article by Stefan Pollard, Director of Email Best Practices for Lyris, 4 Ways to Fix Your Email Marketing:
There’s no denying that email marketing can be a powerful and positive influence on your customers — but you’ve got to make sure you get it right, right from the start.
A good contact strategy can serve as a road-map to email marketing activities — and developing a solid contact strategy is key to email marketing success, whether you’re sending to a list of 1,000 or 100,000.
The following tactics serve as a solid starting point for developing and implementing your touch points for sending emails…
Know your product buying cycle: When it comes to higher dollar products and services — those that would require a purchase order or approval from a supervisor– the product buying cycle creates a built-in communication opportunity.
Win back customers: While it may be tempting to ignore the portion of your email lists that isn’t responsive — they either don’t open your email, or do open it but don’t click through on any of the content — it isn’t a good idea. Allowing these recipients to languish on your email marketing list increases your chances of diluting the value of your email metrics and increases the risk of future delivery problems. Why not reinvigorate these readers with a little bit of special attention instead?
Take advantage of onboarding: If you’re dropping new email subscribers right into the middleof your existing email marketing stream, you’re losing out on a great opportunity. By adding a series of onboarding emails that follow your initial “welcome” email, you’re providing new shoppers or leads with valuable information about your brand and their potential shopping experience.
Reinforcing your brand positioning-by providing an informational email (a white paper, an invitation to a free webinar) or reiterating a strong area of your customer service offerings (free shipping, 24/7 tech support), are both ways to slide recipients into your email flow without leaving them gasping for breath.
Create an editorial calendar: Many businesses develop a six-month or 12-month editorial calendar that highlights promotions and corresponding educational information that they’ll be offering in their newsletters throughout the year. Keep this editorial calendar in mind as you’re developing additional sales-oriented campaigns to send to recipients — watch your email metrics to ensure that your sending frequency isn’t creeping up to unacceptable levels, and that your brand and product messaging is complimentary from issue to issue.
