While other strategies for customer communication such as mobile applications and social media interactions have become hipper and trendier in recent years, numerous companies still understand that email is a tried and true method for keeping in touch with valued patrons. Sending a well-timed email can help with everything from delivering marketing messages to helping customers troubleshoot the products they've already purchased.
Because email is still so important, numerous businesses have vowed to step up their game when it comes to email marketing deliverability. In order to get maximum ROI from their marketing initiatives, companies need to ensure that each message they send is likely not only to reach its intended recipient, but also to lead to a sale in the end.
According to Direct Marketing News, this requires fine-tuning one's email strategies and perhaps debunking a couple of myths about the way the communication channel works today.
Bad data is only the beginning
Many people assume that at its core, email deliverability is a matter of data quality - if you clean up your lists of people's addresses and eliminate the ones that are misspelled or outdated, you're virtually guaranteed success. While it's true to a certain extent that clean data matters, that's not the whole story. Quinn Jalli, senior vice president of digital marketing services at marketing services firm Epsilon, explained that there's another layer.
"About eight years ago, list management meant cleaning lists for invalids," Jalli told DMNews. "Today's list hygiene is really focused on activity or engagement by consumers, so when we talk about cleaning lists, we're talking about removing people who haven't opened or clicked on your offers in X months."
Marketers' motivations for having a clean email list have changed. They don't just want to get through - they also want to be heard and be relevant.
Reaching the inbox is a start
Therefore, there's a new way of thinking about delivering emails in the marketing environment. In short: Reaching people's inboxes is nice, but that's only a starting point, not a final destination.
"Yeah, you have a clean list, but what are you going to do? Batch and blast for the next six months?" asked Graeme Grant, chief operating officer at SaaS analytics company CQuotient, according to DMNews. "You've missed the boat, and people will ignore you."
Deliverability is an important goal in email marketing, but so too is relevance. The objective today is both to send the right message and to make sure it reaches the right place.
