Whether you’re well versed in email marketing or whether you are a newbie - how much do you really know about what it takes to succeed at email marketing?
Join us as Matt talks to Gabriella Rapone about the common misconceptions of email marketing and how we as business owners can get our email game on point and optimise email for profit.
Gabriella Rapone, of Email Maverick, is specialised in email marketing for eCommerce businesses. Her expertise is engagement, open, click and deliver to Inbox. She sent over 100 million emails during her career. Gabrielle has run and owned her own email service provider for over seven years, having consulted for brands like As Seen On TV, United Online, and Classmates. She is also the author of a book about email marketing, "Hit in the Inbox".
Email Reputation is Key
We have a tendency to focus on the sales and by giving full attention to open rates, click throughs or the revenue. Of course we all want sales but Gabriella stresses the importance of viewing them as a by product and not the primary focus.
As email marketers our focus should be on the main objective of email, which Gabriella points out, is to protect your email reputation. Your email service provider (ESP) doesn’t dictate whether your email lands in an inbox or spam, it’s your reputation that determines your email readability. It’s not worth sacrificing email reputation for a quick sale.
How do you protect your reputation?
If we provide value we give reason for our emails to be read. When we understand what makes our users tick and what motivates them, it's far easier to get them to click. It’s not just about luring them in with salesy copy and heavy discounts but really understanding them - what do they value? What motivates them?
Our subscribers sign up to email lists in response to a felt pain, need or desire, not because of who we are. It’s up to us to understand why they have that pain or desire so that we can help them bring relief or fulfilment.
How do you engage?
We have to understand the place of email in the online world. It is just a display media that gets users from point A to point B. By looking at the data we already have and using the tools at our disposal we have what it takes to engage with our audience. It's not about whether we use short or long copy but about engaging your subscribers with what they value.
Gabriella is a strong believer that if we protect our email reputation by always engaging we will sell more clicks.
Show Transcript
The full show transcript is available for download here.