How to build perfect email marketing?

In our last article we’ve covered what makes perfect email marketing. In short: the database should be single and segmented, the mailing should be automated and personalized, and in order to constantly improve performance, you need to monitor statistics and use split tests to test hypotheses.

Today we are going to tell you how to put it into practice.

How To Create The Perfect Email Marketing
How to create the perfect email marketing

What errors can you face

Here are 4 major mistakes many people make when building an email campaign.

  • Use tools without understanding why they are needed and whether they will be useful. Analyze the situation and only then choose tools for specific tasks. Otherwise, you will waste time and waste your budget on things that you might not use. For example, spend several months integrating with an expensive tool, but you never start using even half of its functionality.

  • Send bulk emails only. They increase sales in the moment, but in the long term lead to burnout of the base. Investment in development – personalized mailings: listen to customers and consider their interests when developing a marketing strategy.

  • Don’t test hypotheses. It’s not just about split tests. Without analyzing competitors’ performance, goals and business needs, mailing will be ineffective. For example, you think that affiliate materials do not increase loyalty, in reality this may be a misconception. A marketer should not be guided by opinions (neither his own nor others’), he should rely only on numbers. And to get them, you need to put forward and test different hypotheses.

  • Store data in different locations. Collect all information about your customers in one place: this makes it easier to track their interactions with the company. Otherwise, when you want to scale your business, you will have to spend a lot of resources on creating end-to-end analytics and combining into a single profile the disparate data about each customer.

Step 1: Analyze your email marketing campaign

Each marketing campaign is individual: one starts from scratch, while the other lacks just a couple of steps to the ideal – there is no universal recipe. Therefore, the first thing to do is assess the current situation.

  • Define goals. Make sure they meet the SMART criteria. Clearly formulated goals will set the vector of work, help to draw up an action plan and analyze the results. Once the goals have been set, decide on the methods and tools with which you will achieve them. For example, the introduction of a welcome chain will help shorten the transaction cycle, and the addition of product recommendations to trigger emails will increase the average check.

  • Analyze what steps you took earlier, whether they were effective. For example, you provided a feedback form, but customers do not use it. This means that the step was ineffective and you need to understand why it happened.

  • Imagine how you can improve performance. Each of them also has its own tools. For example, instead of one letter to “abandoned cart” you can make a series, or change the subjects of these letters, offer a discount or free shipping for placing an order within 24 hours.

Most of all, it motivates to return to shopping - a personal discount on products abandoned in the basket.  However, this marketing ploy may "spoil" buyers, so cock the pros and cons.
Most of all, it motivates to return to shopping – a personal discount on goods abandoned in the basket. However, this marketing ploy may “spoil” buyers, so cock the pros and cons.

Step 2. Get the base in order

Attracting new and retaining existing customers is useless if you send emails to the wrong people. Inactive subscribers damage the email reputation and cost money. To put the database in order, you need:

1. If you are just starting to work with subscribers, get rid of incorrect addresses, duplicate and non-existent domains. For this use validatoreg built in DashaMail… In addition, use two-step confirmation of your subscription to the newsletter for new users to protect your database from spam traps and non-working addresses. If you have been working with the database for a long time and you see that the statistics of openings are decreasing, do reactivating sleeping subscribers

2. Make the base unified if it is fragmented. Let the history of all communications between the company and each client be kept in one place. In particular, you will see the engagement of subscribers in your mailings and do not miss the moment when she needs to cleanse her from inactive audience.

Working with a single subscriber base, you will immediately see its general state: audience dynamics, engagement, activity, etc.
Working with a single subscriber base, you will immediately see its general state: audience dynamics, engagement, activity, etc.

3. Segment subscribers by gender, age, purchases, time zone and other parameters that are relevant to your niche so that only those who are interested in them receive emails.

To implement the last two points, use customer data platform (CDP)… It allows you to store information in one place and divide subscribers into groups relevant to your business.

Base segmentation capabilities
Base segmentation capabilities

Step 3. Set up personalization and automate mailings

Connect the CDP platformto automate mailings and make them personalized based on all user data. It is enough to think over the templates once, the system will do the rest for you: it will put down the client’s name, pull up the products he likes, send a reminder that the favorite product is back in stock, and so on.

We talked in detail about how to set up personalization in the blog, and they wrote about automation in this article… Once you implement these tools, you can launch triggered mailings. Here are some scenarios for them:

  • the client subscribed to the newsletter – we launch a chain of welcome letters to get acquainted with the brand and demonstrate the range;

  • put an item in the cart, but did not pay – we will send a payment reminder;

  • I haven’t bought it for a long time – we give free shipping or a personal promotional code to encourage new purchases, etc.

Deferred item price drop notification
Deferred item price drop notification

Step 4. Analyze the first results

Once the first steps have been taken, the first results can be measured.

  • If the indicators have increased, then we adjust the strategy and increase the effectiveness of the mailing: we test different formats, test hypotheses, master new tools.

  • If the indicators remain the same or have worsened, then we look for where the mistake was made and fix it. For example, new customers do not receive a welcome email thread or purchase. So, you need to create a mailing list that would solve this problem.

Step 5. Improve performance with split tests

Once your mailing is set up, you can improve it. This is where split tests help: they can be used to test hypotheses and implement the most successful ones. Your tool must provide correct results.

For example, in order to receive figures as close to reality as possible, the DashaMail service provides special calculator… It determines the required number of subscribers for a test mailing and helps to eliminate statistical error in determining the winner.

For more information on how to use split tests and what hypotheses can be tested, we told in one of our previous articles

conclusions

So, to build the perfect marketing:

  1. Collect a single customer base and segment it according to the relevant parameters.

  2. Automate your newsletters and make them personalized.

  3. Analyze statistics to adjust your strategy.

  4. Improve the effectiveness of your emails by implementing only the best hypotheses.

It is important to choose the right implementation tool. Specialized email marketing services are best suited, such as DashaMail… It provides everything you need: a validator, CDP platform, split testing tools, detailed analytics on mailing lists and databases.

Implement and let your newsletters become perfect!

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *