In the latest edition of our popular State of Email Live webinar, host Guy Hanson welcomed a new panel of participants to join series regular Greg Kimball, and this time, we talked email marketing from the trenches.
Jeff Derby, Bonnie Malone, Rodrigo Mesquita, and Priyanka Roy, all customer success experts at Validity, joined State of Email Live to provide their view on the email world today, taking from their experiences with their clients, industry-leading brands in a variety of categories, and the emails they receive. During the discussion, a couple questions prompted actionable advice for email marketers looking to be sensitive to the world today while managing successful email programs.
Are there any recurring themes in the guidance your teams are providing to clients?
It’s interesting to note all our panelists, although scattered across the globe, agree on one thing: Senders simply need to try their best. Some things will work (tailoring messages to different groups based on location or current events) and some things won’t (mass-emailing full lists without regard for subscriber engagement), but the main thing is to try your best to balance your needs and the needs of your customers. Our panelists also encourage their global clients to test email strategies they’ve always wanted to try. There’s probably no better time to try out an emoji in your subject line, if you’ve been thinking about it, because why not? Everyone is looking for a “new normal,” so new tactics in their inbox likely seem a little less threatening today than it would in other circumstances.
What do post-lockdown email strategies look like?
Don’t forget, not every country or even state within a country has the same road map for ending lockdown strategies. Keeping this in mind, our panel of customer success experts shared a common thread for all senders: Things won’t go back to normal. They advise their clients to re-evaluate their sending practices, their common themes, and strategies to determine what things need to change to accommodate a very different world. Batch-and-blast emails, though always frowned upon, now are really ill-advised. Demonstrating you know and understand your recipients will go a long way, and personalization is key in that effort. For senders in countries without a clear road map, be it business-driven or simply an understanding of when life will return to some semblance of normal, our experts suggest you look to your peers. How are other countries or industries less impacted by the pandemic changing their strategies? Borrow the learnings from those doing it first to better plan for your own return to a “new normal,” but above all, stick to best practices and trust email is still the most valuable channel for engaging your customers (because it is!).
This is truly just a sampling of the awesome ideas and tips shared by our customer success experts, so if you want more of their advice, we’ve got the recording available to you here. Join us on June 10 for our next edition of State of Email Live as well, to get data, recommendations, and insight in real-time! See you then.