Hank is an author, speaker, podcast host and Sr. Manager of Client Solutions at iContact, a Ziff Davis company. With a passion for all things digital and social, combined with more than 20 years of experience in sales and marketing, he has been dubbed the Digital Marketing Infotainer because he makes marketing fun and successful.
The holiday season may be over, but that doesn’t mean your email marketing efforts should be! In fact, the post-holiday period is a great time to engage with prospects and customers, keeping them in-the-know with your brand.
Email marketing should absolutely be a staple in your marketing efforts throughout 2023. That’s because it has an average ROI of 3800%, and the average order value is at least three times higher than on social media. This makes email the most affordable and effective marketing channel!
Here are five steps to take to plan for success in 2023:
Analyze your results
First, analyze the results of your holiday campaign efforts for last year and this year. Determine what worked well and what didn’t. Use this information to improve your future email campaigns.
Next, analyze your open and click-to-open rates as they will tell you how well your subject lines and CTAs (call-to-actions) worked. Review your subject lines, content, images, as well as your sending frequency.
It is also important to analyze your unsubscribe and complaint rates to determine if/when your audience became disengaged with your emails or your brand as a whole. Use this information to decide if you need to change something like your sending frequency, content, or offers. Look for trends in your data such as increases or decreases in opens, clicks, spam complaints, and more. It will help paint a picture of your efforts and results so that you can plan for the future.
Send frequency
Second, move to a regular schedule for your email campaigns. Being consistent without being annoying is key when it comes to keeping your audience engaged. You should dial back if you increased your send frequency during the holidays.
It is normal to send more emails around the holidays to help increase visibility and sales, but that may not be what your subscribers signed up for and may unsubscribe or mark your message as spam. Give them a break.
Use segmentation
Third, use data to segment your audience and send relevant messages at the right time. There are many ways to create segments, but here are four main options:
- Demographic: Age, Gender, Income, Education, Occupation.
- Psychographic: Lifestyle, Values, Concerns, Personality, Attitudes, AIO (Activity, Interest, Opinion)
- Behavioral: Opens and clicks (did or did not)
- Geographic: Country, City, Density.
Once you have your segments, you can use them to send targeted and relevant emails that will help with engagement and increase conversions.
Plan ahead
Fourth, create a sending schedule. This will help you start off on the right foot and keep your audience interested while ensuring that you always have content for your campaigns!
Even when the holidays are over, the celebration does not need to stop! Other holidays, such as Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day will help you and your audience stay in the holiday marketing spirit. Maybe sprinkle in some fun lesser known holidays such as National Cookie Day or Give a Hug Day.
Need help with crafting email subject lines that will help you crush it in 2023? Look no further than the iContact Ultimate Subject Line Guide. It is packed with 501 examples of good (and not-so-good) subject lines based on data from real customers that sent emails using iContact. It is broken down by types of emails as well as by industry
List hygiene
Finally, engage with your subscribers and anyone who has become disengaged. Run a winback campaign to re-engage with subscribers that are no longer interacting with your emails. It’s healthy to clean out those that are too far gone!
Speaking of disengaged subscribers, it is important to clean your list of dead weight since it is skewing your metrics and can hurt your email deliverability (getting into the inbox). Identify subscribers that have been in your account for some time, say six months or a year, and perform list hygiene or a winback campaign for those that have not opened or clicked an email in the same amount of time.
Conclusion
There you have it – Five tips for success for your email marketing campaigns in 2023! Wishing you a Happy New Year and continued email marketing success.
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