questions and difficulties. In their 2012 Email marketing benchmark,
marketingsherpa surveyed 2,735 companies and asked them to rank the
significance of 12 common email marketing challenges. In this chapter, we
will focus on the top five challenges and suggest some ideas through which
you can address these issues.
marketers want to amass valuable data across their different channels. For
instance, they might like to see the possible relationships between landing pages
and emails or to track the sales process of an email conversion. In addition to the
obvious reporting benefits such integration provides, it also opens the door to a
much more enjoyable experience for email subscribers.
Just think about it--if you could bridge the gap between email marketing
performance and social media activities, landing page conversions or new
customer acquisitions, you are that much closer to optimizing your sales funnel
and delivering content that your community loves.
In order to integrate your email marketing with your other data systems, you
need to use marketing softwarethat allows for that integration to take place.
In fact, integration is the foundation on which Hubspot’s softwarewas built
as it connects sEo, blogging, lead management and reporting with email
marketing and lead nurturing.
combining your different marketing databases allows for clear segmentation
and ability to better target your customers and prospects with relevant email
messages. once you have access to an integrated marketing system, keep
your buyer persona in mind and focus on the opportunity to target the right
audience with the right message.
the more targeted your email campaigns, the more content you’ll need. key to
promoting relevant content in email is to provide an offer that is connected to
the initial request. what action have your contacts taken on (or even off) your
website? Offer them content that fits with their intent and their needs.
to grow their email database, marketers sometimes purchase lists. this
practice will surely get you into trouble: it might add invalid addresses to your
list and thus pollute your entire database. Even if the addresses you acquired
are valid, the new recipients will most likely not be interested in your content
and either unsubscribe or not engage with your emails altogether. both of
these alternatives are undesirable.
to retain subscribers, a lot of companies send fewer emails, thinking that the
communication frequency might in some way define engagement. Rarity of
emails means they are more special, right? wrong. Frequency of emailing,
as we have established in our science of Email marketingresearch, doesn’t
necessarily negatively impact subscriber retention.
