I have been reading the blogs about direct marketing and email campaigns. It seems to me that the online world is getting nicer and nicer! Am I alone in this? I read Rebecca Caroe’s blog “From copy mistakes to inbound superstar” and was heartened by Jon’s epiphany of writing to people rather than email addresses.
One of my main annoyances is that the emails I get do not tell me why I am getting them. Nor do they remind me of any company I may have had dealings with as the branding is all too often completely forgotten about.
I still get an email which is addressed to Nin once a fortnight- no idea why or how this came about! So it was good to see “list hygiene” being a big consideration.
Emails are still one of the most popular forms of engagement and those that send them are recognising that the receivers are jaded and busy. If the email isn’t of use to them then why bother opening?
Marketing is much more of a trade off than it has ever been. Knowing and adapting to your audience has never been so important.
I would like to take the personalisation of emails further. Think of them as a conversation, why start the conversation a fresh every time? It is unnecessary work for you and a waste of time for the person who receives the email! The personal touch should run through your marketing like a stick of rock.
If they have come to your site and signed up for a newsletter that session can generate a report which can inform the kind of newsletters they receive from then on. This is the conversation I was talking about! A newsletter or email should be viewed as a space for interaction rather than a place to hang a banner.
The email and the website should be working together. It is no good using open and click through rates as indicators of success when the bounce rate on the site is near the 100% mark. The content on the landing page needs to remain relevant to that person.
How do you do this? There are many Email Campaign Managers and automated marketing providers but I really would invest in a single platform that provides both. This means that it will be able to adapt if email stops being your primary communication method, if you build up your mobile presence a single platform means that the content only has to be done once and then it can be sent via all channels and to all devices.
Personalisation can sometimes be a little bit creepy, but if we approach it with the same integrity that is advocated time and again in B2B Marketing Magazine then I think we should be ok. Personalisation has been dubbed the corner shop mentality in a digital age and there is no reason why this cannot be beneficial to all.
Find out more about email marketing with the personal touch here.