Anyone can press the “send” button on your email campaign. But great email results aren't just about cutting-edge technology, beautiful email design, or all the data you need.
What am I missing? People with personality traits that lead to success. I've worked with great email marketers over the years, and they share 10 personality traits that help them achieve great results.
What makes email marketers great?
1. Concentration
A focused email marketer envisions the role of email in the marketing realm of an organization and how the channel contributes to growth and optimization beyond the marketing department. Part of this focus is the insistence on letting strategy lead in decision-making.
Strategic thinking is essential for email success. One of my email mantras is “strategy before tactics.” This means developing goals and objectives and a plan to achieve them before thinking about how to implement the strategy.
Achieve your goals and keep your eyes on the prize. No matter how you define it, stay focused on your email plans and keep distractions at bay to increase your chances of success.
An example of practicing focused thinking is developing an email reactivation program that is based on strategy, not just when to send reactivation emails.
Let's dig deeper: 9 steps to create an email reactivation program that really works
2. Service spirit
Great marketers don't just sell. They help others find solutions. It might be solving a problem, answering a question, or helping out at the right time. Give your customers what they want, and they'll give you what they want, from their first purchase to years of loyalty.
This is the philosophy behind the useful email marketing concepts that have defined my approach to email for 26 years. When you help others achieve their goals, they will also help you achieve yours.
Service-oriented marketers put the customer first and understand who they are, what they want and need, and how to make them feel heard and valued. Think about what you can do and make every part of your email program customer-focused.
Naturally, the company's needs and obligations are also taken into account. But the beauty of helpful email marketing is as I said before. If you help your customers, they will also help you.
Let's dig deeper: 4 emails your customers will love — and help them love you
3. Curiosity
Curious marketers want to know everything. Why do our customers buy from us instead of others? Do they like our emails? What makes them more likely to click through to an email? What makes email persuasive? How can we have that? What are other brands doing? What is the latest technology? Will it help or will it distract us from what is currently working?
Testing is in the DNA of curious marketers. They are willing to do the necessary work to set up a test program built on scientific principles and incorporate it into their regular email workflow. They know they can use testing to build extensive knowledge about their customers and their motivations for engagement. Then use what you learn through testing to make more informed choices about improving your email program.
This is the basis of what I call “comprehensive testing,” which allows you to go beyond basic A/B subject lines and copy testing to gain deeper insight into customer behavior. Because your email database is your brand's target market, the insights you gain through comprehensive testing can be applied across your organization.
Let's dig deeper: How testing can improve email marketing conversions
4. Open-minded
A natural consequence of curiosity is to have an open mind. Open-minded email marketers approach the channel with broad expectations. They take a long view of the benefits of email and do not accept the idea that email's only job is to facilitate quick sales.
Having an open mind makes marketers more receptive to new information and ways of doing things. Instead of reusing an email playbook from one year to the next, we're willing to try new things as long as they make sense for the program's goals, objectives, strategy, and audience.
Open-minded marketers welcome learning through testing and are willing to be proven wrong if an email reveals more insight or a better way to execute. . He’s also a great addition to our marketing team.
Plus, you're more likely to use your email data wisely. When investigating the veracity of data, they are wary of introducing bias. The truth is revealed when the analysis is done in a neutral state of mind.
5. Patience
Successful email marketing takes a long time, from building an active and engaged subscriber database to achieving program goals. Email marketers (and their bosses!) must be willing to invest time and effort into this process.
Rather than focusing solely on short-term profits, such as sending only sales-driven emails, good email marketers adopt a philosophy of “growth through marginal returns.”
A welcome email program is a practical application of this concept. Setting up the perfect email chain can take months. But think about all the opportunities you'll miss in the meantime. Instead, start with one strategically designed and tested welcome email and build from there.
Having patience is also an important part of the testing process. It takes patience to formulate solid hypotheses, run tests long enough to obtain statistically significant and reproducible results, and interpret the results.
6. Efficiency
Marketers, especially email marketers, have traditionally been short on time, talent, and budget. Is there one thing they don't lack? Work!
Developing a strategy, running tests, launching campaigns, and keeping up with industry developments and what your competitors are doing – all of this can lead to long days and stressful days with little time to catch your breath. there is.
That's why marketers who focus on efficiency are so valuable. You can identify redundancies, gaps where errors can creep in, and other time wasters to create efficient, flexible, and repeatable processes for email deployment, testing, and strategy development.
7. Pragmatism
We typically think of email best practices as generally accepted principles of good email marketing. However, they are not perfect, not unanimous, and may even work against your email program's interests.
Good email marketers are critical thinkers who work within the law, but they also know when best practices aren't appropriate for their email program. This pragmatic attitude doesn't mean they ignore the law or do anything that jeopardizes their deliverability or brand equity. But they know when to accept reality and find viable ways to deal with the problem.
The opposite of the pragmatic marketer is the purist. They follow best practices without questioning whether it helps or hurts the program or the origins behind the best practices. Success can be even more difficult for purists, as they prioritize general concepts over the best interests of customers and companies.
Consider a persistent hot button for email retrieval. A best practice is not to purchase a list of email addresses. Lists of email addresses can cause deliverability issues, as they do not include permissions. But many companies still do it.
A pragmatic approach may provide better functionality for your email program. A realist would say: “I can't stop my business development team from buying email lists because it's legal in my country.” However, you can manage these addresses so that your sender reputation and the effectiveness of your emails are not compromised. You can. We're also going to improve our organic acquisition and build a business case to show our business development team why they're wasting money on these listings. ”
8. Adventurous prospects
These marketers love to stay on top of industry developments and what their competitors are doing. The phrase “we've always done it this way” is not in their dictionary. They enjoy getting out of their comfort zone and pushing the boundaries, but they don't chase after the latest shiny toy to solve what's making their email results worse.
This takes the traits of open-mindedness and curiosity to another level. Adventurous people want to try new tests, try new automations, and improve old automations. Pair them with pragmatic or capable colleagues and they can become a formidable force, but any focused marketer should still be able to work with them.
9. Anthropological trends
This is a fancy way of saying that you understand why people behave the way they do, whether it's because you studied psychology or because you paid attention to what you learned through testing and observation.
They ask, “Are customers more likely to respond to an email that promises to save them money or one that appeals to their emotions?” “How can I create an email template that appeals to both impulse buyers and thoughtful people?”
This characteristic is based on the psychological aspects of persuasion and motivation. These marketers use their knowledge of human behavior and behavior to design messages that use visual cues and address cognitive quirks and biases to appeal to different audiences. I will make it possible.They know one size fits all do not have Fits everything.
If you missed a psychology class in college, you can catch up quickly. First of all, my article on his MarTech “How persuasive email design impacts the e-commerce customer journey”
10. Devotion
I've left this personality trait until last, but that doesn't mean it's not the most important. on the contrary! This includes all the other characteristics I've already talked about and applies them to doing everything you can to grow and improve your email channel.
For avid email marketers, “good enough” isn’t enough. They understand that channels can offer more than just discounts and sales. They insist on receiving emails to promote everything from sales to his website traffic to achieving company goals.
They apply the concept of incrementality, which goes beyond brand equity to measure business growth attributable to specific marketing efforts, such as email campaigns.
They optimize the email's sender name, subject line, and preheader. This is not only to encourage one-time opens, but also long after an email has been sent, the email's “nudge effect” can encourage customers to take action just by seeing it in their inbox. Because I know something. received.
Devotion also reveals how email marketers are trying to improve their programs. They pride themselves on providing reports that go beyond just numerical reports and instead use that data to provide context and insight.
These reports will help you create a solid, compelling business case that you can present to management to obtain more budget for improvements that will drive growth.
Build a comprehensive email marketer
Do you need all of these qualities to be successful? No, it's hard to find marketers with all of these qualities. However, you should have at least a few. If you're working with a large team, you might be able to cover all of these.
Additionally, you can develop the qualities you lack in order to improve your marketing skills. They may not fully understand email-specific attribution challenges or why people behave the way they do. But you can learn!
You may have noticed that all of the characteristics listed here apply to other professions as well as marketing. But when you apply them to your email and CRM, you can take your program to the next level and take advantage of all the benefits implicit in a strong email program.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.
