When I wake up in the morning, I get out of bed, walk over to my Windows Phone, and turn off my alarm. Prior to turning off my phone I quickly skim through my emails that I have accumulated since I went to bed. 9 times out of 10 these emails are “spam”. The only thing that I read from these emails is the headline. I don’t even open them. I am not engaging with this email whatsoever.

I have participated in email marketing while interning at Bellingham Marine. We would use a service called MailChimp, where they coined the term “Send Better Email”. Which is just that. They allow you to send better email. MailChimp allows you to customize emails using templates. They also offer tips on what to do regarding wording of headlines, when to send out an email to get the most exposure, and much more.

A popular podcast by the name of “StartUp” (which I am halfway through) advertises MailChimp throughout their podcast series. I would highly recommend checking out MailChimp and the podcast “StartUp”. Maybe even get a hat for your cat.

Back to Bellingham Marine. One of my early tasks while interning, was to create an E-newsletter. This was an excellent experience because I was able to learn how to use MailChimp. Another reason why it was an excellent experience was because I know what we were doing wrong.

Our E-newsletters were blasted out to 903 subscribers. Out of those 903 subscribers, 305 (35.6%) of them actually opened them, and out of the 305 people who opened the email, only 81 (9.5%) of them actually clicked on the links provided. A 35.6% open rate is not too bad. But it can be better and I will tell you why.

Hubspot created an awesome video series that talked about the importance of email marketing. One thing that really stood out to me that they talked about was the idea of sending out an email from a personal account. What I mean by that is, don’t send it out from News@YourCompany.com. Send it out from CodyHulsey@YourCompany.com. By doing this you are personalizing this E-newsletter. This will increase open-rate by 3-5%. Crazy, I know. Something so simple, can make such an impact.

Another point that Hubspot brought up was that you need to know your audience. They broke it down to a simple equation called, “CATS”. Right content + right audience + right timing = success. Next time I release a E-newsletter or mass email of some sort, I am going to make sure that I break up our audience in to targeted lists. One of these lists can be geographically segmented. Bellingham Marine has clients that are in different countries. For these clients we can figure out a time to send out that E-newsletter where it hits them at the perfect time. Not 3AM in the morning. Another type of segmentation that I will be doing is firmographic segmentation. This is where you segment by company size, company type, and/ or industry. I will be setting up a different headline for marina coastal engineers that will be more compelling than “Bellingham Marine E-newsletter”. Instead I will create a headline like, “E-newsletter: coastal engineers MUST read”. Or something even better. You can even perform A/B testing on small segments to figure out what really sticks with your subscribers. You want to capture your audience. You want the email to add value, not ask for it.

Think of yourself as the CAT in this situation. You are taking that lead on a journey with the right content, right audience, and right situation. Which results in success. The man below is obviously happy that you took him on that journey.

But at the same time you can’t just change the headline and not change the copy. The copy is arguably the most important part in an E-newsletter (headline is also up there). To create more effective E-newsletters, personalize the email copy. Change keywords that are more valuable to that segmented audience. Change paragraphs, change CTA’s, and change the benefits. Get creative and figure out what really makes your segmented happy. What questions are they dieing to have answered? Figure them out. Personalized emails see 14% higher click-through rates and 10% more conversions. This will take some extra time, but it will be well worth it.

Christoper Lester believes that you should create a continuous flow of email marketing that is consistently hitting your potential prospects. When I first read this, I thought to myself, “So you want me to spam my email recipients?”. But then I kept reading and my thoughts changed. If you are creating a series of automated emails that get blasted out once a day, twice a day, or even more, you want to make sure that the emails you are blasting out are beneficial to the recipient. You want to solve their problems. You want to come off as an authority that knows what they are talking about. When you are consistently sending out valuable information, that recipient will consistently be opening that information to learn about what you have to say. This doesn’t mean send out E-newsletters every single day, it means send out short-text email’s that are packed with content that resonates with your subscriber.

When a subscriber recognizes that you are consistently answering their questions during the buyer’s journey, they will leave the awareness stage and then enter the consideration stage. During the consideration stage make sure to send them more impactful content whether it is webinars, case studies, FAQ sheets, product whitepapers, or third-party reviews. By doing this it shows that you truly care about them, and that you want to help them in the consideration process. If that lead enters into the decision stage. During this stage you want to send them free-trials, ROI reports, product demos, consultations, and estimates and quotes. Figure out where your buyer is during his/ her journey. Then hold their hand throughout the rest of that journey (as corny as that might sound).

Last night I met with Lucas Mack, who is the CEO of 4th Avenue Media. Mack told me something that really stuck with me. Mack told me something along the lines of, “The minute you break your promise of sending out information every day, or every week, you lose the trust of that subscriber. They will never come back because you are not truthful. You are a liar. No one wants to be friends with a liar”. This really resonated with me because I realized that sometimes I would not post on Facebook for a while, or post a picture on Instagram. I was breaking my promise of posting consistently. From this day on, I am going to make sure that we are being as consistent as possible and staying to true to our word.

Email marketing is not dead. But what is dead, is the email that you receive that is not personalized to YOU. Make your subscriber feel like they were the only one that received that email. I hope that you have changed your mind about email marketing, and have realized that it alive and well. Email marketing is here to stay and will only become more popular in the future. Until next time fellow smarketer…

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