Dear Email Marketer,

It’s with great delight that I write to you this day, so I hope you’d be able to read this, knowing how busy you might be at the moment.

I’ve grown to understand how herculean a task it is having to maintain a healthy email marketing culture. It’s worse when you have to juggle it alongside other roles within the digital marketing sphere.

Though fairly unpopular on this part of the world, email marketing has over time proven to be among the most relevant methods of up-selling, converting and educating an audience. Needless to say is the frustration that comes with this form of marketing style. I’m talking about times when you’d almost feel depressed on seeing your paltry open rate at the end of a campaign you were so sure would blow. The number of unsubscribes at times too has it own way of making our hearts skip. *my heart skipped a zillion times lol

This post however wouldn’t be dwelling on how much of a linchpin email marketing is, but rather about the mistakes I’ve made (whilst a pawn in the digital marketing sphere) and the lessons I’ve learned from them all. Consider it a conversation between two people talking about their job roles.

Let’s go.

1. You’d get tempted, but don’t buy lists

Imagine a random person in your neighborhood bringing food to your doorstep during Ileya or Christmas… that’s exactly how you make people feel when an unsolicited mail drops in their mail boxes. While the benevolent of them might let it slide by simply marking your mails as spam or thrash it without thinking twice, the no nonsense type will report you straight up, an act which will in turn lead to a reduction in your emailing reputation and set you many miles backwards as you will for a long time be unable to send mails to a large fraction of your list.

What you should do?

Simple: build reputation from scratch. This can be done by allowing people willingly sign up for your newsletters as against coercing them into doing so or buying their data. Peeps will willingly sign up for your newsletter if they figure you’d constantly provide them with either useful or entertaining content.

2. Test-send Every F*cking Time

Unlike blog and Instagram posts where already published posts can be edited and tweaked after publishing, emails cannot. This is why it’s best to be triple sure before hitting the send button.

Re-reading one’s draft is to licking one’s blood. But this is email my friend. It can’t be recalled once sent. I could have compared it to a tweet but a tweet can still be deleted after publication. This is what solidifies the validity of firstly sending a marketing mail to yourself before shooting to your list.

What you should do?

After composing a mail, ensure you send the test to your personal mailbox. After which you’d peruse to check out the following:

• The alignment and readability on both mobile and desktop.
• Grammatical and spelling errors.
• That all hyperlinks (including call to action buttons)are directing to the right pages.

3. Segmentation is hard. Do It Anyways

This probably is the hardest thing to do as an email marketer.

List segmentation, the act of classifying the behavior of your recipients after every email campaign, goes a long way in moving you closer to you goals.

I once sent out a general email to invite potential suppliers to a marketplace I manage. Of all 100, only 43 recipients opened, and of the 43, 12 took action by clicking on the sign up link. What I did immediately was segment by splitting the 100 into 3 groups. the first was directed to the 57 who didn’t bother to open my mail to tell them what they’ve missed. The second was for the 31 who didn’t click, reminding them to take the leap by signing up. Lastly (since not all those who clicked actually signed up), I broke the 12 into two and then congratulated the first 10 who’ve signed up by telling them the next step and reminding the other 2 to complete the sign up process.

Result:

• 6 of the initial 57 who didn’t open eventually did and signed up.
• none of the 31 who didn’t click signed up.
• 1 of the 2 who didn’t end up signing up eventually did.

Verdict: Had I maintained just the single list of 100 leads, I’d probably have just 10 signups. Segmenting rewarded my effort by pushing my signups to 17.

4. Schedule… like A year ahead

I tried joking after the ellipses. All I need you to do is to always prepare your mails well ahead of time (at least 24 hours before the actual send time). This gives you ample time to sleep over all you’ve prepared. Most times you’d need to make a few changes to the grammar, arrangement or flow. Truth is, a recipient will easily recognize a hurriedly put-together mail. You don’t want to irritate your audience, would you?

5. Consume From Others

This point needn’t be stressed.

You’d agree with me that becoming good at anything requires you to do more of such things.

Becoming good at email marketing requires that you consume as much as you possibly can from as many newsletters that crosses your path.

What to do?

Sign up for newsletters in droves, study and adopt tricks from good ones, try to spot flaws (and possible corrections) to the not-so-good. Trust me, you’d grow in no time.

5. Don’t die

Consistency is another uphill task for almost (if not) all of us. Please ensure you stick to your schedule (I still sulk at this though). Be consistent.

Have you decided to send your letters just once in a week? Don’t leave your readers waiting.

What to do?

Just don’t die! x3

End.

I recently started a daily thread on “the things I’ve learned since deciding to take digital marketing seriously.”