Scary good email marketing features, you say?
In the spookiest month of the year, we thought we’d look at something that strikes fear into the hearts of every TouchBasePro employee, “underutilised email marketing functionality”! 😨 Let’s dive into why these scary good email marketing features are often overlooked.
As email marketers, we often find it downright terrifying how some of the best functionality platforms like ours have to offer can be more overlooked than a Stephen King hotel.
This blog is going to take a closer look at some of this functionality, and hopefully give you some shockingly new ways to engage an audience that might be ghosting you. 👻
Integration, because no one system should be working alone…
You’d be surprised at how many companies view their email system as a separate entity in their organization. While your ESP is definitely a unique tool built to serve specific functions, it could (and should) be working alongside the rest of your systems. As any good horror movie or book will tell you, NEVER SPLIT UP!
By integrating your email system with your website, you can facilitate seamless automation and deliver unique email campaigns to new registrants.
You can even take this a step further and integrate your ESP with your CRM, payroll systems, internal communication systems, and pretty much any other system in your organization.
Some systems are going to be easier to integrate than others, but our technical support team is always on hand to help make integration like this possible.
A/B Testing 123…
What do the director of a scary movie and an email marketing team have in common? We both need to understand our audience.
Unfortunately, we can’t do test screenings of our latest film to gauge audience reception, but we do have the next best thing from an email marketing standpoint, A/B testing.
It’s scary how underutilised this functionality is, considering how effective it can be. A/B testing is quite simply the process of testing 2 different campaigns’ efficacy by letting your audience decide which campaign they prefer.
Why is this such a scary good email marketing feature? Well, you send out 2 versions of the same campaigns to a smaller portion of your database, and based on a variety of engagement metrics, the most successful campaign is delivered to the rest of your audience.
You can use this to compare subject lines, content, different designs, and pretty much anything else. We often think we know what our audience wants best, but realistically we should trust them to inform us of their preferences.
Use your audience to guide your email environment, and meaningful engagement won’t be far off.
(Personal Opinion – New Line Cinema could have used A/B testing when they remade “A Nightmare On Elm Street” 🙄)
Dynamic Content
Do some members of your email audience have tastes more specific than Hannibal Lecter?
You might want to look into dynamic content…and a nice chianti. 🍷
Dynamic content allows you to display specific content to unique segments of your email audience, all from within the same email campaign.
Let’s look at a practical example. I have an email campaign promoting two holiday destinations, A lakeside cottage on Camp Crystal Lake and a lovely suburban guest house in Haddonfield, Illinois. I need to send this campaign to both Jason Vorhees & Michael Myers, but I don’t want to risk upsetting these guys by sending irrelevant information (these guys are easily upset). By using dynamic content, I can include both destinations in my email campaign, while only displaying the relevant destinations to each terrifying killer, I mean segment…
I’ve also included an even more practical example below by AARP, because according to our marketing team “I’m taking this analogy way too far, and we work in a marketing agency, not a haunted house”.
In the below example, AARP used dynamic content to show geographically specific information to its subscribers based on the city they resided in.
More Automation Than A Jigsaw Death Trap
We briefly touched on automation when we looked at integration, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible.
Automation is far and wide one of the most complex suites of functionality available to us email marketers. It requires practice, insight, a willingness to experiment, consistent monitoring and adjustment, and a fair amount of foresight as well.
We use email automation to fulfil some of the expected functions in an email environment, like receiving an email campaign when you join a database or sending audience members email campaigns on their birthdays, but like a gremlin that’s been fed after midnight, it’s capable of so much more.
Some of the more unique ways we use automation are for things like celebrating milestones that your audience has been a part of (anniversaries of them joining your database, or making purchases), using automation to re-engage dormant subscribers (sometimes all you need is one little push) and abandoned cart reminders (because if scary movies have taught us anything, it’s that nothing is truly abandoned…).
We also use automation to build unique customer journeys designed to nurture your audience over a long period of time to guide them toward specific actions and outcomes. Nurture journeys can last from several days to several months and are used to keep your brand in the front of your audience’s mind while also providing them with relevant and useful information before they even ask for it.
Furthermore, these journeys can be tailored to react to your audience based on the way they engage with your email environment. Should I get the same email as the next person, if I haven’t opened the last 2 emails you sent me? Probably not, which is why you can use automation to create unique customer journeys based on user activity.
Still feeling a little scared, then why not let our killer customer success team take the lead, we promise we’re getting you out of here alive.
As Experiential As Dr Frankenstein
On an almost final note, don’t be afraid to experiment!
Marketing teams and individuals all over the world are constantly finding new ways to build marketing experiences across marketing channels and email marketing is certainly no different.
Be bold, take risks, and find new ways to step up your email marketing. Let email enhance what you’re doing with your other marketing channels, and try to keep the focus on improving your audience’s experience.
As a final bit of spooky fun, I thought we’d look at one of my favourite experiential marketing campaigns in recent memory. The new horror film “Smile” placed actors at several baseball games to promote their movie. All these actors did was smile menacingly in the background during these matches.
Simple and effective, like most great marketing campaigns. Downright creepy, like most great horror flicks…
Conclusion
Well there you have it, scary good email marketing features you’ll be horrified to miss!
But not all hope is lost! This functionality is all part of your TouchBasePro account (creepy paid actors aside) and you can start experimenting with it right now.
Does it feel like it’s all a little too much? Reach out to our team! We’ll help you get out of that teenage summer camp/haunted Halloween town/demon dimension located within a puzzle box/nightmare where you can actually die/rural Texas farmhouse alive!
Good Luck, and Happy Spooky Season!