Fixing your email marketing campaign

Stephanie Miller at MediaPost.com offers some help to battle a slagging email campaign.

There are three main problems to combat:

1. Subscribers are fickle and unpredictable. They change their minds immediately after subscribing, they complain when they mean to unsubscribe, they even complain when we just send messages during their busiest days, and they often ignore our best sales messages.

2. At the same time, ISPs and Receivers lump our carefully produced marketing messages in with all bulk mailers and apply the same level of mistrust and cynicism to our mail streams as they do the non-permissioned mail streams of mortgage ads and get-rich-quick schemes.

3. Still further, others in the interactive marketing team and executive management are just as likely to view the email channel as “free” and dismiss requests for resources for data integration or analytics.

So what can you do? Here is some of Stephanie's advice:

"Instead of only batch and blast, insert two to three more relevant messages into your promotions stream. Include a few tips to help readers make their living room more comfortable, get a jump on spring cleaning, or be more productive at work. When readers find value in your messages, they are more likely to open the next message, and so on..

"If you don’t have triggered message technology (although every MTA/ESP worth their salt can provide this), batch up everyone who is new in the past week, purchased in the past month or hasn’t opened or clicked in the past three months. Sending a relevant follow-up message after these behaviors has boosted campaign response by up to 600% for many marketers. Of course, it’s on a small base, so the trick is to cover as much of your file as possible."

We love the first tip. Quick tip lists (can be about anything) are always fun to read.