Don’t Kill Your Email Campaigns Through Haste May 15, 2020, | Posted by Guest

While some brands have backed off of their email marketing efforts as they work to get on top of managing their business’ response to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, others seem to have taken the decrease in traditional business efforts to indicate that they must flood inboxes in order to ensure that their prospects continue to convert. Site Impact knows that it can be difficult to know what to do, which way to lean at a time like this. But it’s important not to let haste lead you to kill the metaphorical golden goose that email represents; so today we’re going to get into how to organize your campaigns to avoid the most common pitfalls we’ve seen during this period.

Avoid inappropriate frequency changes

Frequency of emails is one of the key factors in the success of ongoing efforts at any time--but many brands have increased the frequency of sending beyond anything that could be considered reasonable. Some brands that normally send monthly have begun sending weekly or even daily, trying to drum up business through ecommerce and other alternative platforms where brick-and-mortar options are no longer as viable. While this kind of uptick in sending may not be as much of a liability for huge brands like Pizza Hut or Target, it can spell disaster for SMBs and other brands that can’t absorb the costs of lost engagement as readily. While email is an affordable channel, throwing extra money to send too often in what will ultimately result in diminishing returns is a bad strategy all around. Instead, look to increase your sending frequency subtly and make the emails you send out count.

Tailor offers effectively

One of the issues that has come up repeatedly as house-bound consumers delve more deeply into the emails they’re receiving is that offers they’re receiving actually don’t apply to them; delivery options for restaurants that are only valid for certain geographic locations, for example, or shipping offers that are no longer available. If there’s anything worse than driving people to report you as spam for sending too many emails, it’s promising your prospects something that you won’t--and can’t--deliver on. The solution to this is to make sure any geographically-based offers are heavily tailored and are only going to people who you are absolutely certain are in the correct areas to redeem them, and to make sure any other offers you make are equally restricted to specifically the audiences that will be able to use them. Use your data, and make your data work for you.

As brands try to get back afloat after a trying period of uncertainty and enforced economic contraction, there’s an instinct that many have to go at email marketing with a “full steam ahead, damn the torpedoes” approach; but this kind of tactic can actually backfire on several fronts. If you move back into email too hastily, you can end up alienating your prospects either by overloading them with too many emails or by inappropriate offers that they can’t redeem. Make sure that you’re tailoring your offers sharply to the segments you’re sending them to, and that you’re taking care to increase your frequency in sending emails in a way that is proportionate and logical, and you’ll get more out of your campaigns than a competitor that’s taking a firehose approach. Contact Site Impact to learn how we can help you manage your campaigns and put your best foot forward every time.