There are 2 archetypes of an email marketer.
Although this seems like a generalization, this is what my experience tells me so far.
I’ve described the types here, but let’s dive into this a bit deeper.
What I describe as an ACME Inc, stands for a regular email sender, looking to increase their ROI, achieve certain KPIs and create a high output from the email channel.
They look into the most of the things they work on as inputs and outputs.
If we input X, the output will be Y. All we have to make sure is that Y > X.
“Earn more than you spend” kind of principle.
And that’s ok, from a certain perspective. For example, as a CFO, you might look at hard numbers, as a CTO you might analyze invested resources and as a CEO you might look at your commitments to the market, the employees and the board.
The problem with this angle is that’s it’s too far above the nitty gritty stuff.
The actual rules of engagement on the field.
There’s a lot of nuance in every technology, in every marketing channel, in every sales script. And that’s what executive and middle managers are for.
One of the big problems in the email industry is that companies hire people who have no voice in the company, other than their very narrow specialty like email deliverability, email HTML or usage of the technology vendor, like an ESP.
This is not a very desirable position to be in and seniors in the email field usually slide towards other areas like general marketing management, product or similar.
The result of this is that the mid-level email marketing professionals usually occupy the email and CRM positions in companies. By definition, mid-level means that you can’t really argue with a top-level executive. At least not all the time.
This is where the ACME Inc issues come from in the first place: a big hole in decision making between those who actually operate with email marketing and those who define the KPIs.
The situation has changed for the better recently but still remains as described in the vast majority of the companies.
This is where technology providers saw an opening and came in with their platforms to send and automate campaigns, segment databases and a slew of other features. Each one of them offers some information and tends to push their own “method” that aligns with their feature-set. This can help sometimes, but it depends on many factors.
We’ll talk more about technology providers later on, but what’s important to take away from this is that there is a big deal of disconnect between proper email marketing and top-level executives who make decisions. And that this is largely being used by the technology providers to jump in and provide the “know-how“, which is always tied to their most important features.
My advice here is to carefully read the ACME Inc vs EMCA Inc and understand the set of beliefs and motivators that drive both of them.
Understand that while ACME is looking to gain from the email channel and their subscribers, EMCA is trying to bring value to their subscribers through their email channel. Although ACME Inc might be formulating that what they do is exactly what an EMCA Inc would do, a quick look at a few of their emails tells you whether it’s relevant or self-serving.
The same like this course that’s looking to bring value to you, your entire email channel should only be about bringing value to your subscribers.
Jay Abraham famously said that you have to be your client’s most trusted advisor, that you need to take responsibility for their well-being. That you should never allow them to:
- purchase less than they should, that is optimal for them
- in less quantity or combination that’s good for them
- in less quality that they should
- and less frequently that is good for them
While this sounds cheesy at first, think about it.
If the purpose of your entire email channel is to provide value to your clients (subscribers, users, call them however you like), getting them to confirm that email address is necessary for them to be able to receive that value from you.
Getting them to open that email is a pre-requisite of reading your message and understanding the value.
Them clicking through that email is necessary to be able to obtain the value.
If you think like that and you genuinely provide value to them, this strategy changes its meaning completely.
From cheesy to truthful.
Think about it.