The 2 Most Important Things for Email Marketers in 2013

What do you need to do to be successful and what is the difference between smart email marketing and decent email marketing? Part two in a two-part series.

In Part 1, I addressed the successes of the email marketplace while (hopefully) casting a light on the crucial need for people smarts and subject matter expertise to make your email program head toward the next level. I used the Obama email program success to prove that technology didn’t drive hundreds of millions of donations, but smart and crafty people spending a great deal of time and energy on every last detail did.

So what do you need to do to be successful and what is the difference between smart email marketing and decent email marketing?

Clear Business Goals Drive a Successful Email Program

I have touted for years the crucial success factors of having executive buy-in and being able to articulate the business purpose of the email program. This is a chicken-and-egg scenario, but get 10 email marketers in a room and they can talk about their open and click targets and list size goals. Ask them what that means for their business and you may be in trouble.

As digital marketing evolves from niche channels with small budgets and low expectations to a fundamental part of most businesses, the ability to tie your email program to your overall business goals is of paramount importance. I tell my clients and internal team to just imagine being in the elevator with the brand CEO and when she asks why are we doing email and what is it doing for our business, you need to have the answer – a good one. Remember, CEOs don’t care about opens and clicks.

Being a Mobile Marketer Who Happens to Be Leveraging the Email Channel

It’s what mobile consumers are doing and they are the future of digital. According to Pew, email is the most popular activity on smartphones and tablets. Yep, not Facebook or search. The good old-fashioned warhorse of digital communications. Of course, some want to make this warhorse turn into a unicorn with mobile magic.

Email marketers are mobile marketers whether you like it or not (go ahead and add it to your LinkedIn profile right now). I often hear that our audience isn’t reading on smartphones. Knotice says the number of emails opened on a mobile device (smartphone and/or tablet) during the first half of 2012 overall rose to 36 percent. My agency finds the number around 50 percent for some of our clients. Either way, it is increasing for everyone. If you are in the dark on your audience and their mobile readership, make that goal number one.

Changing your mindset would be goal number two. Ensuring that mobile doesn’t just sit in the back of your head but greatly impacts all of your email markets should begin to be the reality in 2013.

New tricks, technology, and savvy testing can accomplish a lot on the mobile front. In addition to understanding your audience and building a game plan with that in mind, the execution of your campaigns to a mobile readership is crucial.

The right message on the right device can be the difference between a read, a click, or a purchase. Leveraging our agency’s proprietary technology, check out our holiday card, which served up multiple versions based on how and where you were reading our email.

Desktop Version

desktop-holiday-email

Mobile Version

mobile-holiday-email

While the difference between a vertical and horizontal email may not seem like much to say, an e-commerce marketer, the user experience is what makes the difference. Your merchandising strategy is going to differ in a small, suburban mall vs. a large, pedestrian-friendly urban location. Shouldn’t your email be the case for smartphone and desktop subscribers? Think about how you can place products and calls to action in a different manner on an email targeted to an iOS device vs. a more traditional templated approach in a desktop version.

A smart email marketer is going to explore what moves the needle on timing and segmentation of each campaign. Mobile email opens up a whole new can of worms – we have found response times increase greatly at certain times of day for mobile users. A sound segmentation strategy comes out of this kind of knowledge so you can consider segmenting groups based on behavior or device.

The possibilities are plentiful and strong as email marketers need to embrace this new way of thinking to become the best mobile and email marketer they can be. What’s your prototype for this new mobile email marketer?

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