Looking to Spice Up Your Email Efforts? Try These Three Email Campaigns
As an email marketer/marketing automation expert, I’ve had the chance to plan and send out a lot of emails. And by that, I mean a lot—I’ve never done a full audit, but I reckon north of 150,000,000. Easily.
That’s given me the chance to see a lot and I’d like to share with you 3 of my favorite types of
#1 The Sales Email
The first is a sales email. You have
The goal of this sort of email is plain and simple: to drive clicks and drive sales. And if you haven’t noticed every week there’s a sale on something. It might seem mundane to the one reading it—especially when the offer is so predictable that you almost know when your next BOGO offer will appear (Tuesday). However, it is potentially more routine for an email marketer if they are just sending a “one-size-fits-all” email to everyone on their list. What’s worse is if the sale offer remains the same week after week.
But throw in a little data analysis, sales trends, and goals into the mixing bowl and you can whip up some really cool and innovative ideas and data models to help drive revenue.
Above, I mentioned the “one-size-fits-all” and with two simple
- The first step is to analyze your product catalogue and buyer behavior. By doing so, you can customize offers. For example, delighting the gentlemen who love socks with a special sock deal—sock it to’em!
- The next step is a more complicated because it requires analyzing purchase patterns and understanding who needs a little cajoling and who doesn’t. Oh, Mr. Soandso bought 4 months ago, 3 months ago, and 2 months ago with free shipping but hasn’t returned? No problem let’s spruce up his email with a dash of free shipping to get him back into purchasing mode!
#2 The Sweep Campaign
Moving on to the next type of email, I’d like to present the resend email—sometimes I refer to this as a
The nice thing about this is that you don’t even need to stretch your imagination and tie the subject line to the email. It can totally be an independent subject line. For example, try something like, “Excuse me, but I think you forgot something.”
Another pro tip is to send this one 30-36 hours after the initial email. Two reasons for this:
- You have to give your list the proper time to open it.
- You could do 24 hours, but what if you’re sending it at the wrong hour? That’s why I prefer 30-36 hours. By doing so you get to hit the inbox at the extreme opposite time as the initial campaign.
#3 The Conversation Starter
Finally, the last email type I really like is the conversation starter, which is to be done all the time, but particularly at the beginning of your auto responder campaigns when you are building customer engagement.
This is one of the reasons that I am passionate about marketing automation. Far too often, I read emails from companies and organizations that lack enthusiasm. The emails just miss the boat on developing a relationship. They think they have done a spectacular job by setting up 4-5 emails in a welcome series, but when you read them, they are really just 4-5 standalone emails.
Take some time and develop a relationship. People are going to be reading your emails so you should strike up a conversation—a memorable one worth having. Here are some ways to do this with a personal voice: allude to future emails (I’ll be back soon with 5 top tricks!), quote previous emails (remember trick #1?), and above all solicit direct response (let me know what you think).
Remember, that personal touch is key, but sometimes we just miss it because it’s so obvious… it’s common sense—the sixth sense.
