12 questions to ask about your email marketing

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on September 25, 2008

Facing a few days of travel, I jotted down twelve honest questions to ask myself about my own email marketing efforts while away.

You may find value in tackling these yourself. And perhaps you have others to help keep us all away from the black hole of mediocrity (if you do, let me know in the comments).

So...

1. Are you sending out email just because it's scheduled or because it makes sense to do so (for both recipient and sender)?

2. Can you still explain why you send out the emails you do? When was the last time you reviewed your email strategy? How else could you use email to your advantage?

3. Is your email marketing budget based on how much you (don't) want to spend or on how much you want to make?

4. We all agree that you need to do something about inactive addresses on your list. How do you define "inactive"? Have you looked for patterns in the data suggesting critical timeframes or triggers that turn people into inactives? Can you use that insight to develop a preemptive "reactivation" program?

5. What about "actives"? Have you considered rewarding those who have stayed loyal and responsive over a long period of time?

6. Do you worry more about what ISPs think about your email than what subscribers think about your email? If you take care of the latter, won't the former take care of itself?

7. Why are you not testing more? And is the reason a valid one or an excuse? Is it because you're worried you might discover you've left money on the table? Are you afraid to change something just in case it temporarily makes things worse?

8. Are you doing things because it best serves your objectives or because it's what everyone else in your market does?

9. Are you evaluating your program using the numbers produced by your ESP or software? Or are you using this data to produce other numbers that are more meaningful in terms of what you're actually trying to achieve?

10. Why are you happy with your "open" and clickthrough rates? What are you doing about the majority who aren't "opening" or clicking?

11. When was the last time you actively solicited feedback from subscribers? Are you afraid of what they might tell you? Don't you see feedback as valuable intelligence and a conversation starter?

12. Is each email you send out really the best you can do?

[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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4 Comments:

"Do you worry more about what ISPs think about your email than what subscribers think about your email? If you take care of the latter, won't the former take care of itself?"

I totally disagree with the second half of this statement. You cannot please everyone all the time, and you shouldn't try. If you want your business/newsletter to have some personality, you're probably going to irritate or offend some of your readers from time to time. If your newsletter lacks personality and tries to please everyone, you'll find just as many irritated subscribers (maybe more) because it's just too boring.

Depending on the nature of your unhappy readers, there's a very good chance they'll start hitting the "spam" button and flagging your correspondence, rather than following the appropriate unsubscribe procedure. It's important to keep ISP happiness in mind, regardless of how hard you work to ensure that your readers enjoy your correspondence.
By Stefanie, on 08 October, 2008

Thanks for taking the time to comment Stefanie - appreciated.

I agree that personality is good for an email. But disagree that personality implies you will irritate or offend subscribers and consequently get more spam complaints.

If personality is causing spam complaints then the problem is with the sign-up process. The wrong people are getting on the list.

If the email reflects the brand and website personality, and expectations are set properly during the sign-up process (such as through sample issues), then there shouldn't be a problem. On the contrary, your subscribers are likely to be happier than the average.
By Mark Brownlow, on 08 October, 2008

Is your email marketing budget based on how much you (don't) want to spend or on how much you want to make?

I think the bigger question is not what one wants to spend but rather what one can spend. Based on the campaign there may or may not be definitive correlation between these two questions. But the question of how much one wants to make cannot be treated in isolation without due consideration to how much one can spend.
By Drifter, on 11 October, 2008

Thanks Drifter.

Yep, agree what you can spend is clearly important.

The key implication behind the question is to ensure that budget is being allocated based on a full understanding of the potential of email marketing (and the potential value of investing in it) and not simply because you can also do it cheaply.
By Mark Brownlow, on 12 October, 2008