Chapter 16: Email Marketing
When coming up with a strategy or schedule for your email marketing, it’s important to be intentional about the types and frequency of emails that you send. There are a few key metrics when it comes to judging an email campaign: Open Rate, Click-Through-Rate (CTR), Purchases / $$, and Unsubscribes. A perfect email will be opened by almost everybody, have a high CTR to your website, will result in people purchasing your product, and have little to no unsubscribes.
Email lists can be fickle - people have the option to unsub at any time and remove themselves from your list. For this reason, your top priority should be to minimize unsubs. So how do we do this? A few things to keep in mind:
Only email people who opt-in to your marketing emails. This is pretty straightforward, but DO NOT email random people or lists you find online. If you email people who haven’t opted in, they will most likely unsubscribe, and they might even report your emails as spam. If your emails get reported as spam too much, they will be hidden or outright blocked by gmail. This is the absolute worst-case scenario, as you’re pretty much screwed if this happens. If you’ve ever purchased something online and during checkout you see a box that says “sign me up for marketing emails” or something of the like, that’s what we mean by opt-in. It should be a choice for every person who receives an email, and this should reduce the amount of unsubs or spam reports you get. Trust me, having extra people in the list doesn’t help if they’re working against you.
Don’t flood the inbox. Again, seems pretty straightforward. A person might be legitimately interested in getting marketing updates from your company, but if you berate them with multiple emails a week, they’re almost surely going to unsubscribe. Keep the emails sparse and meaningful. Make sure there’s a reason for every time you hit their inbox. Here’s a few examples of good marketing email types:
New drop or product announcements
Early access codes
Discount codes
Marketing campaign notifications
If you’re rolling out a new product, seasonal discounts, or limited edition runs, these are perfect things to hit your email list for.