3 Ways to Realize Your Marketing Email’s Untapped Potential

As a digital marketing channel, email is the oldest way to communicate with customers. “You’ve got mail” brought people closer to brands, and marketers have been using this channel the same way for 20 years with almost constant engagement results. Just like in any discussion between two people, we should think of email as a communication medium that evolves. An effective communication is on time, adds value to your recipient, and reaches the inbox when you press Send. In the case of companies, it’s the same, and here are three ways to increase your email performance:

Relevant marketing for the recipient

Thoughtful targeting is key. Make sure you know your audience, and what they want out of your brand when it comes to email. The subject and content needs to make sense to the recipient, and their needs when you deliver the email. Demographics, firmographics, and behavior help you understand what your recipients are looking for. They can also give insights on their possible interests as it relates to your brand.

Communication on time

Depending on the season, time of day, or behavior of the recipient, dynamic communications need to have smart drip campaigns that update when your recipient performs an action. As people, we understand that. It’s harder to implement, though, when you can’t use all your data in real time. That’s because the lag between when your ESP’s marketing cloud syncs with your internal database is typically hours, or even days. If the recipient performs another action after previous behavior triggers a new campaign, it can lead to emails that are irrelevant and confusing to the recipient. And that can be embarrassing for your brand.

Technology enables your vision

When it takes 48 hours for your database to sync with your CRM, your audience goes from being highly engaged in your potential message to being disengaged. You can have the best understanding of your recipient and the smartest drip campaigns, but if your technology drags, for your customer the result is the same as if you had a disorganized and careless campaign. Your partners need to support your vision, and technology hiccups should not justify a disjointed connection with your customers.

Conclusion

Email communications are no different from real-life discussions, and today’s technology enables meaningful connections. The challenge as an organization is to identify the right technology for your vision. Marketers haven’t fully tapped into email performance because they’ve  become comfortable with their technology’s limitations. And they’ve decided to adopt new technologies to increase the performance of marketing campaigns. Email marketing is here to stay, but it needs some TLC.