Email marketing still reigns supreme as the most effective digital marketing channel. The best way to succeed with email marketing, however, has changed. Last week, Kristin Naragon, Adobe’s Director of email marketing, was kind enough to sit down and discuss the present state of email marketing with me. Throughout the course of our discussion, she revealed five important things every marketer should know about email marketing to succeed in the present and near future. By following these simple guidelines, email marketers will begin to move from a tactical function to a strategic member of any marketing organization.
Context is king—you need to understand your customer’s journey
The customer’s buying cycle never stops; maximizing the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign means knowing what stage of the buying cycle your customers are in. For example, if you recently sold them a pair of skis, you know that they are at the post-buying stage. Sending them emails with complementary products and services will increase their engagement with your brand and bring them closer to the next sale. I’m experiencing this type of engagement first hand through the emails I often receive from my personal finance service company, which keep me informed about my financial goals and make recommendations for the fastest way to get there.
Integrate your email—you need to coordinate email with other channels
Boasting an incredible $39 return for every dollar spent, email still delivers the greatest ROI of all digital marketing channels. This, however, does not mean that it should be used as a standalone channel. Email is at its best when it works in unison with other marketing channels. For example, a strong blog can be used to organically drive more consumers to subscribe to your email list; likewise, email can be used to connect more people with your blog.
Kristin also notes that this should go beyond digital channel integration to include offline marketing channels. For example, you can combine your direct mail campaigns with your email marketing efforts by adding contextual cues to both.
Where is your customer? Location matters
If someone is traveling to a new place, this is a perfect opportunity to send them an email alert about products and services they might be interested in while visiting the area. Not far from their favorite brand’s store? This is also another opportunity to engage with customers and send them a message on what’s trending around the block. These are just some of the uses cases Kristin gives us for why location matters for your email marketing campaign. Leveraging the knowledge of where your customer is allows you to optimize their convenience with a perfectly timed email.
This is another area where I have personal experience as a customer. My favorite hotel chain Marriott does a great job sending me an email with local events to attend and activities to do while visiting a new city.
Don’t overlook email as a strong acquisition phase resource—it can aid acquisition all by itself
Although it tends to get overlooked for this purpose, email is a very powerful acquisition phase tool. Kristin gave a great example of how email marketing can be powerful at the acquisition phase for a business in the hospitality industry. Because a good analytics tool will follow a consumer’s Web behavior, look at how it can help add valuable data to that 360 degree of the buyer and feed it into a powerful email message. For instance, if the tool revealed that a consumer in Boston was on a travel site searching for flights to Cleveland, you could email the potential customer a custom schedule of all flights from Boston to Cleveland.
Go beyond clicks—you need to measure everything
Kristin made sure to emphasize the importance of email marketing metrics. Mentioning the necessity of metrics for any digital marketing channel may seem redundant, but she wanted to make sure that we understand which metrics we need to analyze in the first place. She made it clear that while basic metrics such as email opens and link clicks are useful, in order to optimize your contextual management effectiveness, you have to dig a little deeper and also consider the following:
Forwarding rate
Marked as spam rate
Action over time
Unsubscribe rate and volume
When your email marketing campaign follows the above standards, you will see more success
I would like to thank Kristin again for delivering some great insights about email marketing. Assuming you are using the right automation tools, all 5 of these points of action will help your email marketing campaign deliver better results. As always, feel free to post a comment below.
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