The Holiday Season Email Marketing Challenge Is Here*

What type of challenges will you face this season?Bell

  • Delivering the right message at the right time?
  • Will unsubscribes be your top concern?
  • Are your subscribers even reading your newsletters?

Divert the challenges of the season using Lifecycle emails. Start by classifying the subscribers of your current email campaigns into different Lifecycle categories:

  1. Engaged customers – they love your emails’
  2. Potential or interested customers – they’re promising but not on board yet
  3. Disinterested or lethargic customers – For the most part, they have lost interest in you.

Using specific categories will give you a better understanding of the mindset of your customers and allow you to tailor your campaigns accordingly.  It’s a known fact that Lifecycle emails outdo traditional group email marketing, because Lifecycle emails allows the marketer to send the right message at the right time, increasing the probability of recipient engagement.

Subscriber engagement is effected by industry diversity, which demands variety in email type. What type of email works well for one company may not work so well for the next. Likewise, what type of email works for an engaged customer may not work for an interested one. The key is to identify the type of subscriber you’re dealing with and address their concerns, needs or wants –  and remember, before you release any of your email campaigns test and test again.

There are many kinds of Lifecycle emails; triggered emails for example, are those that are sent automatically to your subscribers because of:

  1. An Action Activated when a subscriber performs a specific act; the list member makes a purchase on your website, she receives a confirmation email. Someone signed up for your email list he receives a welcome letter.
  2. An Event   In this case, emails are sent in response to an occurrence which maybe in your calendar, or from data you have about your subscribers. Emails are triggered by date to automatically send Birthday Greetings, send a reminder that their coupon will expire soon or announce your 10-year anniversary sale.
  3. An Announcement Emails are automatically sent out when there’s an important announcement to make such as a reminder to renew before the expiration date.
  4. Time Base Drip Campaigns Emails that are sent over a set period of time in planned intervals in a progressive sequence. They are used to build and maintain customer awareness and systemically move the customer into an active sales cycle. Dundee Internet Services use drip campaigns when someone signs up for a list demo.

Lifecycle email marketing is ideal for assisting users to engage with your product or service.

Lifecycle email marketing may influence subscribers’ who had considered unsubscribing to stay, move interested customers to engaged customers and renew disinterested ones. But, there will always be unsubscribes.

It’s been shown that the highest number of unsubscribes from any list are from those sending too many of the wrong type of emails.  If your subscriber’s inbox is inundated with seasonal solicitations from everywhere, response rate to your email (even with the right content) maybe lower than you expect.   Your subscribers may even be one of the many using a secondary rarely checked email address for newsletters, including yours, or they might simply unsubscribe. What should you do then?

Offer your subscribers email options; from receiving fewer emails to the type of emails, they want to receive. Capture their preferences on topics, products and desired email frequency – no more unwanted Christmas in July email ads.

And more importantly consider where your subscribers are in the Lifecycle channel and capitalize on this by considering what type of emails you could optimize or add; create email segments to increase the relevancy of your messages.

But in the end if someone wants off your list, be a gracious host and say goodbye. You can always offer alternative way for your customer to keep in touch, such as a link to your business’s social media page and invite them back to join your list when they are ready.

What type of challenges will you face this season? World Peace and email delivery what else is there?