5 Ways to Get the Most From Your Email Marketing

Anyone who has spent time in a professional capacity with me knows that I freaking LOVE email marketing. If you’ve spent any time with me socially over a couple drinks, you know I love email marketing. I talk about it a lot, and even have a button that says “genuine email marketing nerd” on it. I have designed, developed, written, and segmented hundreds if not thousands of emails over my career.

Those who are skeptical when I begin to evangelize the world of email marketing often tell me personal anecdotes about how it didn’t work for them. My question in return is - “was it the tool or was it the execution?”

Just like any other marketing tool, the success of email marketing rests not on the platform, but how you use it. So how DO you use it? What can you implement today, right now, with the staff you have (which may only be you) to get the most out of your email strategy?

Here are my top five must-dos to make email marketing work for you:

1 - Grow your list

Your emails are only as successful as the amount of people reading them, so get as many people as possible on your list. Try these tactics -

If you have a physical shop, a simple sign up sheet near your checkout will do the trick. Let people know what they’ll get if they sign up - first access to sales, exclusive email-only offers, etc. Make sure it’s something that’s enticing, and shows the customer that signing up is a benefit to THEM not just to you. You can also ask for an email address as you are ringing through a purchase and again, let them know why you want to email them.

If your presence is mainly online, ask for an email address during check out and add them to your mailing list. You can also run a fairly affordable social media campaign that advertises your business/charity with the goal of collecting emails through lead generation tools, surveys, and/or advocacy forms.

2 - But also, respect the data and privacy regulations of your list

CASL, first introduced in 2014, aims to protect the privacy of Canadians and their data through the legislation of anti-spam policies. It can be confusing, and it can lead people to make decisions that are either overly cautious, or not cautious enough. So before you eagerly grow your list, understand the basics of CASL*

• You have express consent to email someone if they tell you you can use their email (ie, signing up at your checkout on a form)

• You have implied consent to email someone if they’ve completed a transaction/interaction with you (ie, made a donation, bought a product) even if they haven’t explicitly opted-in. You must, however, remove them from your list two years after their last transaction/interaction with you.

• You must include a one-click unsubscribe button in all communications (most major email marketing platforms have this and deal with the process automatically).

The regulations are actually quite generous and give you a lot of opportunity to grow your list while respecting the privacy of your customers/donors. Plus, having a list that mainly consists of people actively engaged with and interested in your business or charity will yield best results.

3 - Segment your list

What have people on your list purchased from you? What have they donated, how much, or to what area of giving? Use this data to create highly segmented and individualized lists so that your customer/donor is getting the exact information that brought them to you in the first place. There are two main ways to do this:

• Create a tag or dynamic field within your main list that indicates preferences (ie, purchases outdoor gear, donates monthly) and create one main email communication that utilizes dynamic content, drawing on the tags/fields you have.

• Create different lists for each category and build a different email for each one (but remember, if someone unsubscribes from one, you can’t add them to another, so keep track of your unsubscribes!)

I take no credit for this quote, it was from an old boss of mine who said, “we don’t want to send one email to 10,000 subscribers, we want to send 10,000 emails, each to an individual subscriber”. Of course we’re not actually going to do this, but it should feel this way to your reader.

4 - You don’t necessarily need to keep it short, but you do need to keep it interesting!

An older school of thought says that readers don’t engage online for long periods of time, so emails should be short and snappy. And while that was maybe true once upon a time, I’d challenge that theory, because people engage online for very long periods of time! Whether they’re reading the newspaper online, or doom-scrolling twitter, I’d venture we spend the most amount of our time engaging with content, online. Your readers are smart, they want to engage, and they want to be excited by your story. So say what you need to say! If you have a long story of a beneficiary helped by your charity, tell it! Keep the content engaging, but keep it.

5 - Do you need all those images?

Most people are reading emails on their phones or even watches. Images, especially large ones can slow load times and make it hard to keep your place on the screen. Images are great when they help tell a story, and you should use them when they do this but don’t use them for the sake of it, as this might distract from your key message. If your friend emails you an interesting story from their day of volunteering in the community, do they need to include pictures for you to stay engaged? Likely not. If they do include one, it is used to illustrate a specific point or particularly compelling aspect of the story.

If you need help segmenting your list, redesigning email templates or would like an audit of your current strategy Reach out to us today at hello@presspausecollective.com.

*CASL is way more comprehensive than this! For the full legislation, please visit the Federal Government’s CRTC site