Emails are not dead. In fact, in 2018, you are going to give them a breath of fresh air. In doing so, you will revitalize your overall digital marketing strategy. There are a few things, however, you need to do to crush your email strategies. It’s not rocket-science, but it does take a little time. So, sit back, read what follows, and then prepare to get started.
Know Your Email Subscription User Experience
Your email subscription user experience is interconnected with your website’s overall user experience. You want to be able to identify a few things, like:
How do your customers or clients find you?
Once you are found, how do they subscribe to your email list?
What other alternative processes do you use in lieu of your website to attract new email subscribers?
At what point in the user experience does a person subscribe to your email?
What is the signup rate for email subscriptions via your website or other forums?
Do you identify any problem areas? What is working and what isn’t?
Do you always make a customer purchase or download something in order to subscribe to your email list?
How hard is it to sign up? Is it different for mobiles versus computers?
You want to identify the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good — you can perfect. The bad — you can change to be better. And the ugly — you can decide to end it; don’t expend any more time and resources on a method that’s not working at all.
More importantly, though, you need to identify how easy and engaging user experience is for email subscriptions. You don’t want it to be difficult. You do want there to be multiple ways.
Understand your Email Subscribers
Why do people subscribe to your email list? Is it for some specific information? Is it to know the latest services and/or products? Is it to keep abreast to the latest news? Is it to acquire information on a matter related to your service or product?
But knowing why people subscribe is only part of it. You need to know who they are. Are they older, younger, professionals, students, GenX, Millennial? Who are they? Your demographics will lend valuable information about how to devise your email marketing strategy. Should you offer different emails to address different demographic concerns? Should you send an email weekly or monthly?
Know Your Email Strategies & Align them with Marketing Goals
Look at your reports and analytics. Is your current strategy working towards your goals? What have you been doing and what have you not been doing? Have your goals benefitted at all?
You must also identify your marketing goals. What do you want to achieve with your email marketing plan? Is it simply to stay in touch with customers and build rapport. Is it to sell things directly to customers? Is it a larger part of your branding plan? Is it all these things and more? Clearly identify your marketing goals, then clearly identify email strategies that contribute towards attainment of these goals. The keyword: clear. Be clear about it; vagueness is costly in many ways, not just financial.
To make sure you crush your email marketing plan in 2018, you need to make sure signing up is easy and without disruption. You also need to take a step back to understand the demographics of your email subscribers so that you can align their characteristics with your email marketing strategy. Finally, you want to evaluate those email strategies and make sure they are also aligned with your marketing goals. This process may take a little time to gather the right information and put it all together, but if you are strategic about it, you will indeed crush it with emails in 2018, setting you up for blast-off in 2019.
