http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UL60IgdfE0
A Tip for Email Marketing Ninjas by Some Very Smart Ninjas
As I picked the brains of one Ninja after another, these great tips for email Ninjas took form. Ninjas are eager to share what their vast experience has taught them, and NewBees can learn from their insights too. Most of the tips focus on refining the processes that are essential to ensure optimum efficacy in each campaign. Building segmentation feedback, refining data collection and use, engaging subscribers with new lifecycle marketing strategies, thinking fluidly and across all media – all are ways to improve results. Even Ninjas need to be reminded of proper compliance and testing. The comments I gathered cover the gamut of encouragements and admonishments.
[Use] your email list to build your social media following. Do that sort of thing. Track the clicks on your share links. Don’t necessarily use that just to build your social media following. When you do that you’re seeing who the people are that are using those networks in the first place. You now have data in your email system that you can use to create other specific campaigns centered [on] social media. You now have a segment just based on people that are clicking those social links who are going to be the people most interested.
Don’t be afraid to reach out to the NewBees and don’t jump down their throats when they want to say, “Buy the list.” It’s definitely not a good idea, but there are a lot of people that just don’t know. So be nice, be outgoing, and help as many people as we can.
~ Scott Cohen of Inbox Group Email Marketing
Keep people engaged and wanting to stay on your list. And one way to do that, and also try to create additional revenue, is maybe coming up with some sort of VIP or loyalty program. You could be introducing your loyalty program early on in a welcome series, and then have recurring messages every month with people’s points balances. Encourage them to spend even more so they can reach that elite status that they are looking for and get some sort of reward for that.
~ Kristen Gregory of Bronto Software
Start thinking mobile. I think a lot of emails are not made for mobile. A lot of people are getting their emails on mobile, so start thinking about mobile rendering, mobile design, and start asking people what type of mobile device they are using.
There are a lot of people that come into this industry on a yearly basis. We need to make sure that we continue to teach them the right way, to teach them what we’ve learned over the last ten years. And it’s that way that email is going to continue to change and evolve and not be a dead medium.
The Ninjas that are out there need to become compliance officers or compliance persons. Think about: What could happen if I do X, Y, and Z wrong? Or how am I going to be affected by sending an email to somebody in a different country? The Internet itself is a global operation, so you need to become an expert – not just on email – but also on compliance. You need to help the new people as well. Not everybody knows everything. Take that time and help them out.
Don’t succumb to the tendency to over-communicate just because you can. When we get the hang of Twitter and Facebook and all the other tools out there – and email, we have a tendency to over-communicate. Just because we can use the tools doesn’t mean we should as much as we may want to.
~ Martin Lieberman of Constant Contact
Actually implement a lot of the things that we all read about in terms of integrating your data bases to your email service provider. And send relevant content, one-to-one content, preferably in an automated or triggered campaign. Start thinking about lifecycle messaging.
~ Marco Marini of ClickMail Marketing
Go fluid. Fixed-width emails just aren’t working anymore, because all different devices change resolution so quickly. You really can’t target a fixed-width layout anymore, so go fluid.
~ Anna Yeaman of Style Campaign
Track where people are coming from in social media like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and imbedding that into your opt-in forms with a custom feel. When they order, you’ll have that tag so you know exactly which videos, which social media sites are driving the most traffic, and – more importantly – which got the most qualified traffic which was leading to the most conversions.
~ “Big” Jason Henderson of Big Marketing Online
If you have organic lists that just grow from your website – people come to your website because that’s what they want, don’t ever mix those with the ones you collect other ways. Those are not as quality of a lead. If you keep those separated and marketed to separately, you are not going to skew your numbers so bad. You’re going to have organic numbers and inorganic numbers, and I think that’s a better way of looking at things overall.
~ Chris Donald of Inbox Group Email Marketing
Please start testing more. I still see a lot of people that are very good at email marketing still not testing enough.