A big Thank You to those that participated in our survey!

You’ve told us that email marketing is a big pain point for you all, coming in even above content looking forward to 2017. Therefore, I’m going to share my top three tips to increase the ROI you are getting on your email campaigns and how you can begin working with your content marketing plan–instead of against it.

1. Email Marketing is About the Customer, Not You

As marketers, and as humans, we tend to make the mistake of creating a marketing plan to decide what we want the customers to do, and then using it to try to impose that will on our customers. But that just doesn’t work, and here’s why:

Let’s say for the example that you’re the Chief Marketing Officer for Michaels craft stores, and your marketing plan calls for a big push towards custom framing. If you send out an email advertising your custom framing services, you’ve neglected to ask what your customers actually want to see in their inbox. Perhaps the click-through rates in your analytics have shown that your customers respond well to seasonal promotions and holiday items, perhaps indicating that they like to get excited for upcoming holidays and plan get-togethers on their computer before shopping in the store.

A better approach to pushing custom framing and giving your customers what they want in such a scenario would perhaps be to advertise a Christmas photo framing tie-in as a gift idea, alongside seasonal promotions and decorating ideas. Marketing is all about aligning your business’ needs with your customer’s wants.

2. Email Marketing Segmenting is Key

Don’t forget that not all of your customers want the same thing. You have to know how to pair the right customer with the right offer at the right time. Continuing with the Michael’s example, let’s say that diving deeper into your analytics shows that one block of customers responds well to seasonal ads, while a different block is operating a season ahead – for example, folks who sell handcrafts for a living will be looking for Christmas crafting supplies in early autumn to be able to build up enough supply to sell for the holiday season, while homemakers will be begin shopping for Christmas decorations later on. Another segment of your customers may shop at Michael’s regularly, and only check your emails to download coupons. Your email marketing platform should be robust enough to segment these customers, opt them in to different newsletter funnels, and deliver the content that they are most interested in seeing. This is a much better approach than throwing everything at the wall and finding out what sticks with the most folks.

3. Make Your Email Marketing Plan Actionable

Don’t just tell your customers what to do, tell them how to get there. Since your campaign should be built around responding to their existing needs and pain points, they should already be receptive to your call to action–provided that you make it clear, actionable, and succinct. Don’t just dump a load of offers in their laps and leave it up to the customer to figure out how to capitalize on them. For example, provide a mobile code that can be scanned at check out for savings, so that your customers know that they have a convenient way to capitalize on your discount offer. This email marketing tip isn’t just for retail or B2C businesses, either–if you sell a service, include a link to generate a quote or open a show room gallery so that your customer has a clear, precise next step to take. That next step should always take them further down the sales funnel as laid out by your email marketing plan.