The #1 Thing People Get Wrong About Email Marketing

So you've heard email marketing is a great way to maximise your revenue.

But you have no idea where to start...

I've been in marketing for around seven years now, and have consumed the words of every 'guru' you can possibly think of. In the early days, I had no idea what I was doing either, and I thought campaigns were something you sent to everyone.

Capture hidden revenue

Email marketing works like this. First, there are flows or automations, sent to subscribers when they match certain conditions.

Think, abandoned cart emails, welcome emails, post-purchase review emails etcetera.

Then you've got campaigns, sent sometimes multiple times a week or once a day to audiences with news and offers.

Segmenting your audience means you send smart campaigns. If you send the same sort of email to the entire list, they're likely to get annoyed. That's why it's important to have add-on items, and new things to drop/launch and talk about.

The 1 mistake everyone makes

The mistake everyone makes with email marketing is to consider the entire audience as one. To send the same campaigns to the entire list, which you should only really do during a big sale (like Black Friday) and even then, it’s not the smartest trick in the book.

Smart segmenting is key to capturing sales, when I started out I had no idea how to segment audiences. I started segmenting by product purchased, but that can get messy if you have lots of products and not a lot of new in.

Then I segmented by engagement level, only sending to the highly engaged audience. That was a bit of a waste of money as we were paying to send to a bigger list.

Finally, I figured it out by considering customers and audience members to be relationships. All relationships need time and attention, right?

See my helpful little guide below.

The Soulmate 💖

These customers are basically your VIPs. They’re the customer you always want. Just like any soulmate, they love everything you do and are excited to be around you.

So, you need to nurture them and keep them happy.

What you should send them:

Purchase anniversary emails
Free gift campaigns
Birthday rewards
Exclusive access to sales
Personal thankyous from the CEO/founder

The part-time lover 😍

These customers are close to being your VIPs. They place high-value orders, are engaged with your emails but don’t purchase frequently. They’re the part-time lover that you sometimes see out on dates with other people…try not to get too crushed.

Therefore, you need to give them an extra push to purchase.

What you should send them:

Free gift with next purchase
Free perk for life (free shipping for life gets good results)
Free gift when you spend over xxx

The good mate 😎

These customers love your brand, but don’t spend high amounts. There could be reasons for this, perhaps when you look at your audience profiling they’re the students or lower income group, or perhaps they just need a nudge to spend more.

These good mates like you a lot, and love spending time with you, but you’re firmly in the friendzone at the mo.

What you should send them:

Free gift with purchase over xx
Cross-sell kits containing items they already love (make sure these kits make sense + add value to the customer)

Glossier example

Glossier has a variety of sets containing best-sellers that are a great example of adding values with kits and sets and cross-selling.

The acquaintance 😐

These customers have engaged with your emails but haven’t yet purchased. They’re a friend of a friend who’s got your number for drinks but hasn’t sent you a text yet. Don’t worry, if your flows are set up correctly, you’ll win them over and give them a reason to love you.

What you should send them:

Regular seasonal or weekly campaigns only
Let your welcome, abandoned cart and browse abandon flows do the heavy lifting

Then, there are the ones you need to win back, and while I won’t go into too much detail today I’ll show you what those segments look like below:

The one thing to remember is that these are all humans and they don’t want to be bombarded by the same lame sales emails repeating your USPs over and over again. They need to hear news and be engaged. Your flows can do a great job of capturing sales if you set them up correctly (your welcome flow should have between 10-30 steps!).

This is why you need to sit down and plan marketing from a business logistics point of view. You need to know which new products are launching and if you have any sales coming up and what’s the most aggressive discount you can offer customers. Plus, in some cases, you’ll need Facebook ads to retarget lapsed customers.

However, with this segmentation strategy - you’ll definitely be onto a winner.