3 Challenges Marketers Face When It Comes To Email Marketing

I participated in the Friday #profschat Tweetchat on email marketing and was really interested to hear and learn about all the challenges marketers are still facing when it comes to developing and executing truly effective email campaigns. Top of the list was segmentation, personas, time of day and frequency.

First things first. Email marketing is a must in any marketer’s strategy toolbox. It is essentially the best way to get your content and message to your audience to spark an engagement, continue a conversation or reignite a relationship and/or renew interest in your company’s products or services. I have found it to be extremely effective in generating leads using compelling content that relates to an industry problem.

Let’s tackle these challenges one by one.

Segmentation

To me segmentation is breaking your list down. You will not be effective with email marketing if you are just ‘spraying and praying.’ You need to be speaking to the person about things that are important to them. By segmenting your list, you are able to break a large group of emails into individual silos based on interest (what content or information brought them to you in the first place?), by job title (you don’t want to send the same email to a CMO as you would to a Marketing Associate), by location (the US and UK both speak English but the letter ‘z’ is not recognized there so adjust your message accordingly) or even by industry and company size or type.

Take a look at how you capture leads or email subscribers. Does your online form have all the fields required to help you segment faster and easier?

Personas

Every company should conduct an exercise where they define the buyer personas. You need to consider the evaluator, influencer, user, decision maker and buyer in the process. What types of job titles fall under each group?

You need to involve sales in this exercise. Ask the top sales person and/or the manager to join the discussion. Look at things like the blogs, magazines or newsletters that each persona would read and subscribe to. Who do they consider ‘influencers’ within their industry? Do they subscribe to analyst firm? Then which ones?

Time of Day and Frequency

In a former company I worked for, we hired a consultant to come in and help us setup email nurturing programs. His suggestion was to email 5 days in a row to the best leads. I was a little surprised by this approach as it seemed like we would be seen as a spammy approach. Considering these were the leads that sales was going to be calling on and emailing during the same time period, it didn’t make sense.

There is no magic formula for the perfect time of day or just the right number to send in a certain time period. You need to test different scenarios until you ‘crack the code’. Use an automation platform like Silverpop or Eloqua to build email nurturing programs that sync with your CRM system. Build a system that includes all points of contact including sales calls, emails, direct mailers and social media.

I was honestly surprised that content and messaging did not make it to the list. Often, I observe challenges with response rates, opens and click-throughs but I didn’t see that come up during the conversation.

What is your email marketing challenge? What did you overcome to build a system that is generating results?

{image courtesy of Flick Creative Commons photographer Erik Mallinson}