One Secret to Email Marketing

A brief diversion from my “Learning JavaScript” series, to discuss a major secret in email marketing. I call it “Single Theme to Right Audience.”

The idea is this; when you send out your blast emails, make sure you’re sending the value that your recipients opted-in for. Now, for some businesses, that’s simple. Say you sell electronic widgets (sorry, couldn’t help myself) and people opted-in for deals on electronic widgets. As long as you give them electronic widgets, whether their blue, green, etc., they’ll likely be happy.

But what if you offer a variety of categories of products or services, and allow subscribers to select those that their are interested in. Ah ha, you’ve then made a promise to present them only the subset of your offerings that they are interested in. There’s good and bad in this. Good that now you have an even more quality lead; you know more about what they want. And they’re more likely to convert from leads and prospects to buyers. However, this comes at a cost (the bad). Now, instead of sending maybe one blast email to all subscribers, you have to segment your emails, sending multiple emails blasts to fewer people, focusing the offerings on only their interests. More resource intensive, yes. But you’ll obtain a huge bang for the buck in doing so.

Now, so far, straight forward. But it can soon get muddy (yes, put on your boots). What about cross-selling? Yes, I’m a huge believer in cross-selling. I admire Trader Joe’s for placing those great looking chocolates right at the cashier, even though I intended only to purchase Moroccan dry olives. But in email marketing, it has to be done with finesse. Straight, out-in-out cross selling will only increase your email opt-outs and spam reports. Cross-sells must be diminished in prominence and visibility. They need to be placed in a location where there seems to be a connection to the primary offerings. Where it gets even trickier is when the theme is slightly broader than what is expected.

I have a client, a travel agent, for which I handle their email marketing. People subscribe based on destination. So how do you cross-sell other destinations without raising red flags? By staying within a theme (ergo the topic of this post). How can you promote Central America or Baja Mexico cruises to subscribers only requesting Galapagos? Simple (relatively speaking). The theme of the email is warm weather destinations, with Galapagos in the forefront, top, highest prominence and visibility. Then, beneath below the prominent offer, place the related cross-sells, Baja Mexico (by the way, called the “Galapagos of the North,” great tie-in, ey?) and Central America. Other relational tie-ins might be the unique wildlife that can be found in each of these destinations. My point is, as long as there is a theme, a relationship to the primary offering (of which the subscriber opted-in), the recipient, at worse, will likely ignore without acting. At best, you may now have gained a new quality lead for a product or service other than what they originally intended. And that my friend, is magic.