"What can we do to make our overall email marketing a better experience?"
After all, email is great because it allows us to build relationships with our subscribers at scale. So here we are, 3 tips you can use today to make a better experience through email, and ultimately more sales.
Tip #1 - Your Email Marketing Should Follow A Storyline Or Narrative
This is an absolute must in your flows, particularly your welcome and post-purchase flow!
The welcome flow is an intro to your brand so treat it like that. Deliver what you promised and then move on to explaining who you are and what you're about.
You may make less short-term revenue through not doing hardcore sales follow up but it will pay massively in the long run.
Also, ***unpopular opinion*** stop treating your post-purchase flow as an upsell opportunity!
Help people win with what they just bought without trying to sell them more! It is much more important that people have success in their customer journey using the first product than buying the second.
If they are 'sale, buy, price drop, to cross-sell, upsell' all just to get the revenue you have lost from the get-go!
How to fix: Map out your flow topics and goals on paper spread them on the flow and if it makes sense you are good to go.
Tip #2 - Your Email Marketing Should Exclude People In Your Flows From Getting Campaigns
Have you ever tried to watch 2 movies at the same time?
This is what you are asking people to do when you send them campaigns and flows at the same time.
This is super easy to do and the impact that it has on experience is massive!
Your flows follow a narrative and it is a tried and tested conversation that moves a person through that part of their customer journey.
How to fix: Create a custom property as the first step in all your flows. Then in your campaigns exclude anyone with said property.
Then remove the property at the end of each flow as the last step **be sure to add a time delay right above it so people are't exiting and then going straight into your campaign segment ***
Tip #3 - Your Automated Email Flows Should Be Exclusive To That Part Of The Customer Journey
That means if I sign up to your welcome flow then abandon checkout come back tomorrow and finish.
I shouldn't be in 3 separate flows!
I am now at the post-purchase stage of my customer journey don't try and change that!
Our flows are there to automate the critical moments of the customer journey and do it at scale. Often when it comes to email marketing we think more is better, but relevance matters!
How to fix: Check your flow filters using some well-thought-out logic. I personally write this down as it helps me think about who I need to exclude from that flow.
Final Thoughts
There it is! Depending on the size of your email program this shouldn't take you more than a few hours to do a spot check and implement a few things.
It will cut down the size of your campaign list -- that is ok though. Remember, relevance matters!
Doing these simple steps will help your create a much better experience for your subscribers and customers.