Sunday, December 2, 2012

Micromanaging Your Email Campaign


Definition of MICROMANAGE

transitive verb: to manage especially with excessive control or attention to details

Control is, undoubtedly, one of the innate tendencies of human beings. We like to think we can control every aspect of our own life in order to reach our desired outcome. However, as difficult as it is to admit, there are certain things that fall outside our range of control.

If we had complete control over the message that we send to others and how those people perceive you, why are there so many people out there with bad raps? Why, when it appears as if you are doing everything right to develop a great reputation, some people just won't give you the time of day?

Email marketing is no different. I deal with businesses on a day to day basis who attempt to micromanage their email campaigns in an effort to predict performance. They then wonder why, after making only minor tweaks to their message, they continue to see drastic changes with each and every deployment. Some deployments will deliver "out of the ballpark" conversions while others will tank. With an unlimited number of variables that are involved in each email campaign, it is close to impossible to calculate the expected open rates, click through rates, and conversion ratio. When you consider all of the elements involved in an email campaign, including the email creative you send out, the database you market to, the state of mind of the email recipient, the time of day you launch your campaign, the subject lines you use, and the landing page you direct your email recipients to, it's pretty safe to say that you have better luck at winning the lottery than you do in predicting the behavior and purchase patterns of your audience.

Put yourself in the email marketing equation. As a recipient of a promotional email, are you more inclined to view it on a Monday morning or a Friday afternoon? What if, just before you received an email advertising a sale at your favorite store, you received tragic news about a family member. Are you likely to give that email your complete, undivided attention? Of course not. However, say you got a promotion at your job 30 minutes prior to receiving that same email. Aren't you now more inclined to whip out your credit card and give in to your buying impulses?

It's hard enough to predict one individual's typical response to a promotional message. Keep in mind that email marketing campaigns are sent to a mass audience with difference demographic and psychographic criteria.

If it were remotely possible to micromanage your email campaign to get a host of new sales leads, sign-ups, and website conversions with each and every deployment, wouldn't everyone out there be following the same formula to maximize their email marketing campaigns?

To the dismay of most, email marketing is not a math or a science. There is no secret algorithm that will guarantee optimal results for each deployment, only best practices to follow.

The benefits of email marketing lie in being able to test different email creatives to different groups of people at different times of the day on different days of the week using different subject lines to determine the best combination of variables for your particular business offering. Success in email marketing is not achieved by micromanaging your email campaign in an attempt to dictate the performance of each deployment. It's achieved by looking at the big picture to determine how your email marketing campaign fits into your overall marketing strategy.

5 Tips to Boost Your Email Marketing   Don't Ask Too Much From Strangers   Six Simple Ways to Engage Your Email Subscribers and Strengthen Relationships   How To Ensure Every Website Visitor Becomes A Subscriber   Mass Mailing: Success Oriented Advertising Solution   Direct Email Marketing Software - A Step Ahead In Online Marketing   



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