Gabriel Marguglio April 26, 2017 2 min read

The Death of Email Marketing?

A common misconception in today’s marketing strategy is that email marketing is dying. Many people are beginning to believe this due to two main reasons:

The idea that email marketing means SPAM and
That email is now too old-fashioned and has been replaced with other methods.

However, with over 4.3 billion email accounts and 95% of online customers using email, why would you want to stay away from this medium to connect with current leads, future prospects, and more?

The answer to this question is simple: you don’t. What you want to stay away from is the way that people have traditionally carried out email marketing.

In order for email marketing to be successful you must focus on sending the right content, to the right people, at the right time. To do so you must segment your database into buyer personas, and understand their place in the buyer’s journey in order to optimize your emails for engagement. Try out HubSpot’s Benchmark Tool to compare your open rate and always keep an eye on your click through rate in comparison to similar businesses in your industry.

Buyer Persona

Segmenting your contacts list by buyer persona should always be your first step in determining your audience for a particular email. Knowing the differences in your customer-specific buyer personas is crucial to implementing any sort of inbound marketing strategy. By understanding their interests and tendencies, you have the ability to use that information to nurture your relationship, thus keeping them interested.

Buyer’s Journey

Next, understand that the content presented must align with where your audience is in their buyer’s journey. For example, customers that are still in the Consideration Stage will likely feel as though content more appropriate for the Decision Stage is too pushy. If you are sending potential buyers information that does not align with their position in the buyer’s journey, they may not see you as helpful or educational. This could result in people unsubscribing from your email marketing efforts. When someone unsubscribes you have lost them, and it’s very likely that they will never be coming back.

Optimization

Develop an action that you want the recipient of your email to take., Always know what the goal of each email is before you send them. Simply sending an email to increase your open rate is not a productive goal. Examples of clear goals are:

encouraging participation in an event
surveys to gather information
generating new leads with forms
offering value to existing leads
providing customers educational offers

All in all, your email needs to, at the very least, feel as though it was meant specifically for its recipient. Take the time to learn about your customers, their needs, tendencies, challenges and pains, and nurture that relationship. If your audience does not feel engaged with the content, they will not feel engaged with you. Show them that you care about their issues and they will see value in your company.