According to a presentation at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013 last week, about 144.8 billion emails are sent every day. Email remains the anchor of a solid cross-channel marketing approach. That said, let’s look at three lessons learned to make email even better. May these ideas help infuse fresh energy into your campaign approach.White Coats and Email Marketing – The great thing about email is how beautifully it lends itself testing ideas and concepts before rolling ideas out to a mass audience. Perhaps you’re thinking about changing your messaging for your brand. Maybe you’re tinkering with the right “voice” or copy tone to best engage your audience. Email can be a laboratory for testing not just one version against another, but also for higher concepts that can benefit the entire organization. For instance, what product should go on the cover of your print catalog? Send an email test of those in the running to see what does best. Are you considering adding some personalized copy highlighting a single product, compared to an email with multiple big images that looks like a landing page? Send a test and see which one converts better. According to Flint McGlaughlin, marketers are constrained by the gap between what a marketer believes to be true and what is actually happening within the audience. Testing closes that gap.
Failure Can Be Good – The old expression, “If you’re going to fail, fail fast” certainly holds true for email. While some marketers are embarrassed or upset when a new approach doesn’t perform as well as they had hoped, that data – that failure – offers an opportunity to learn from its lack of response. Instead of asking “How could this happen,” the appropriate response should be “Why did this happen.” Explore deeper instead of abandoning it all together. Better to improve “good” to become “excellent” instead of getting by with mediocrity that goes unchallenged. Better to fail so you get even better.
