3 Ways to Incorporate Mindfulness into Your Email Strategy

What is mindfulness? And what does it have to do with email marketing?

So, what does that have to do with marketing?

A lot of times, people perceive marketing as fake, gimmicky, and fraudulent. And who would blame them? Marketers are some of the most untrusted professionals in today's world - only 2 percentage points ahead of politicians (YIKES!). That's because, as the old saying goes, there are a few bad apples who have ruined it for everyone.

In order to mitigate this perception, you have to get smart. You can't just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks - that's what got us into this mess in the first place. Instead, focus on the three most important ways to make your email marketing strategy authentic and high vibe.

1. Segmentation

2. Personalization

3. Analysis

Segmentation

Segmentation is a crucial part of your email strategy. Essentially, it is the practice of grouping the people in your email system into smaller, more specific groups. For instance, if you have a form on your website that collects emails for your newsletter, you'll want to group all the people who filled out that form into a segment labeled "Newsletter Subscribers".

Emails can be sent to one segment of people or multiple segments, depending on the information you are sharing. This is where you can really shine - you can get super specific about the information you're sharing in order to create authentic, lasting relationships.

Personalization

Personalization is a little tricky, especially if you have a large database. The most important part of using personalization in your email strategy is to make sure it's working correctly. Personalization is, essentially, using a smart feature in your email system that matches information from a specific person to the email you're creating. Most often, this is used to include someone's first name in an automatically-generated email.

But, here's the key, you have to do a little bit of management to make sure this is working effectively. For instance, if someone types their name into a form in all caps (MEAGHAN), your personalization will come across something like this:

"Hi MEAGHAN,

Have you ever noticed how it's really annoying when someone doesn't spell your name right?"

To quote Jimmy Fallon, "eww". That may not seem like a big deal to some folks, but trust me, you will get backlash. You also can't rely on folks to read - calling myself out here! I noticed that I mistakenly typed my first and last name into a form once (when it was only supposed to be my first name). Now, every time I get an email from these folks Meaghan Dunham is written 35 times (side note, don't over-personalize by including someone's name 35 times in a single email).

Key takeaway: Personalization helps you build a relationship with someone, but you need to make sure you've gotten their information correct. It all comes down to respecting that person enough to make the time to keep your database clean.

Analysis

Analysis paralysis is real, so here are the top three things you should be paying attention to when sending emails. These will also tell you whether or not your message is resonating with the people you're contacting - a key part of developing an authentic, ethical strategy.

1. Open Rate - Open rates are simply the percentage of people who received your email AND opened it. Typically open rates vary between 20 and 40 percent, although the smaller your list the higher your open rate will usually be. If you notice your open rates consistently dipping below 20 percent, it may be time to reevaluate your email strategy.

2. Click Rate - Click rates are, of the number of people who received your email, the percentage of people who clicked on a link. Click rates are typically between 3 and 10 percent. If you consistently see your click rate below 3 percent, you'll want to change it up and link to something different.

3. Unsubscribes - In a perfect world, no one would every unsubscribe from your email list (YAY!). You'll want to keep a close eye on the number of people who are unsubscribing from your email list each time you send. It's not uncommon to see 1-2 unsubscribes every so often, but make sure that number doesn't consistently rise - or that you're getting unsubscribes every time you send an email. That could be a clue that you're sending too many emails or that the content you're providing doesn't resonate.

Congratulations for making it this far! I'm so glad you're ready to take your email marketing strategy to the next level. If you want to get started right now, download my free Welcome Email Template.

If you've already got a strategy, let's schedule some time for a content audit - I'll help you audit your existing content AND provide some actionable strategies to help you pivot toward a more successful email marketing implementation.