Let’s say you’re charged with creating an email series.
Your goal? To get people more engaged and productive with your program.
This means you need more people taking action.
Email marketing best practices show us emails work best if you do these three things:
- Segment: Speak to specific people.
- Simplify: Drive them toward a single action.
- Send: More emails.
1. Segment: Speak to specific people.
Let’s say you recognize two types of people on your email list: beginners and those who are more experienced. Each group wants and needs different information. If you’re trying to talk to them both in a single email, you’re sending them irrelevant information and limiting the potential for people to take an action.
Instead, segment and create specific content for each group to increase the relevance and impact of your emails.
2. Simplify: Drive them toward a single action.
When you focus your email content toward a single call to action you keep emails concise. This way you don’t overwhelm your reader with too much information or too many calls to action.
If you must include more than one call to action, limit yourself to no more than three items. Research has shown that too many choices can derail success.
3. Send: More emails.
When you’re pushing your audience toward a specific goal, always opt for more emails, rather than trying to cram too much into one. Think about how information should be broken up to better help your audience succeed.
Be prepared for some pushback when you share your plan.
If you’re working with a team and you share your plan to segment, simplify, and send more emails — someone will likely say, “We already send them enough email!”
It’s true. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. The real problem is that most of those emails you’re already sending are emails you want to send, not emails your audience has asked to receive.
Big difference.
Here’s an easy way to eliminate this ‘too many emails’ argument.
Instead of just sending emails to your two segments, let your audience choose the emails they want to receive.
If you allow them to opt in to get the information, they’ll self-segment themselves in the process.
With this approach, you’re no longer sending them too many emails. They’ve told you explicitly, “I want you to email me the information.”
Argument over.
But won’t that lead to a smaller number of people getting the emails?
Yes. But those people are going to want your emails. And you’ll have greater impact and a better understanding of the needs of your segments, rather than going through the motions of sending emails that no asked for.
Remember: segment, simplify, send.
It’s likely your instincts were pointing you in the direction of shorter and more frequent emails. Trust them. Move forward with that plan. You’ll get better results because of it.
And if anyone’s giving you a hard time, just show them this post. 😉
D.