Narrow Conversions With Smart Email

Email remains a crucial component to any good digital marketing toolkit. Rainmakers know that an effective campaign can drive online sales conversions, build traffic and capture new leads. It’s also a great way to shorten longer sales cycles and drive repeat business. Here are three smart email marketing tips that can make a difference in your campaign:

1. Personalizing an email with the recipient's first name in the salutation is great, but it's not what customization is really all about. If you want to truly personalize your messages, use a segmentation strategy. Delivering the most relevant marketing content to your customers based on behavioral targeting will usually generate the greatest impact and help overcome response challenges.

2. It's true that consumers need to receive more than one email from you to finally take your requested action, but it's not necessary to follow the Rule of Seven - the notion that a prospect typically must see your marketing message seven times before he/she will convert to a sale. Do your own experimentation and figure out what works for your product campaigns.

3. In today's Rainmaker world, it's more about quality than quantity in your marketing database. What good is it to have 5,000 entries, if more than 25 percent are "dead weight" and never open or click through your campaigns? Think more in terms of capturing the audience that wants to hear your message. Use double opt-in to strengthen your email list. With double opt-in, subscribers take an extra step to actually subscribe. This tactic may seem counterproductive, but it it's a more effective way of building your customer email lists.

Personalize Your Email Campaigns

We know that millions of people around the world are just about now on the verge of breaking the most popular New Year's resolution - to get and stay fit. But many have already committed to that enticing gym membership offer they received in an email campaign right around the New Year. The New Year is the most popular time for gym marketers to launch email campaigns aimed at securing new and renewing expired memberships. But I haven't been impressed with the campaign of a very popular national gym brand who doesn't implement the platform's best practices. Back in the Fall of last year, I discontinued four family membership plans and didn't hear a word from the gym. Just before the New Year, I received an email with the words "we want you back" in the subject line. Good tactic, it got me to open the email and read the gym's offer to renew my membership. I didn't take action, but the marketer no doubt was aware that I had opened the email and clicked through to the landing page offer. At this point, the brand's email customization and loyalty efforts should have kicked in to high gear, making their future interaction with me a little more personal. Instead, I've received two emails per day for 18 days with the same exact subject line message. Not only have I not opened any subsequent emails, but worse yet have developed a perception about the brand as being totally impersonal, not caring enough about my patronage to simply sending me an updated subject line, different message that could have done a better job of acknowledging my documented behavior and encouraging me to the next level in the consumer decision making process.

Here's a hilarious parody of the multiple amount of fitness infomercials you'll be subject to this month. Appreciate your comments on post and video below.