Undeliverable Email

But is our email marketing campaign being received? So many articles (like this) have been written to help us get our emails where they need to go. Unfortunately reaching the inbox is now more challenging than it has ever been. According to Return Path;

Regardless of the reason, declining inbox placement rates represent a serious concern for marketers. With one out of every five emails failing to land in the inbox, brands are missing out on a full 20% of their opportunities to connect with customers and earn their business.

There are many factors that impact whether our information/offer will get to our intended audience. SendGrid outlines four key components to determine if your email marketing campaign will be delivered. They are;

• Message Infrastructure Health
• Message Content
• Sender History and Filtering
• Receiving System’s Availability

Interestingly enough, you can impact 3/4 of these factors. Can you guess which ones? The only item that is truly out of your control is the receiving system’s availability. All other elements you have the ability to impact or control. It’s not by manipulating spam filters or blasting out 5 times as many emails in one week to gain a better return.

Greater Email Marketing Campaign Returns

So how do we capitalize on the missing 20% and maximize the existing 80%? I’m glad you asked. There are many tactics that will help you achieve this end. But this post is not your typical how-to. I’d like to step back a moment and look at an approach that will guide your email marketing strategy.

The 2015 Deliverability Benchmark Report produced by Return Path, states that the greatest email delivery rate was achieved by industries that relied the heaviest on customer relationships. Think about that for a moment. The greatest returns are not achieved by the best technology, the most creative campaigns, or the highest budget. These results were due to the development of deep customer relationships.

So if the key to getting your email marketing campaign delivered is deep customer relationships, how do we foster them? As we connect with our customers and influence our buyers via email, we must consider the following elements to effectively reach them.

• Trust: We know that all relationships are built on trust. Why is it so difficult to realize? Because trust is developed over time and requires many interactions. It requires patience. Industries like retail, health & beauty and apparel achieve stronger placement because they are typically high-touch environments. Real interactions with real people provide greater levels of trust. If you want to connect with your audience, humanize your interactions. Make it personal. Understand the need in the context of their environment, and deliver value in a meaningful way. John Kottcamp says it best;
  

  Companies that excel at delivering rich, personalized online experiences not only produce more loyal customers but also outperform their competition on the stock market, according to a recent five-year study conducted by Forrester Research. (source: MarketingProfs)

  Personalized means more than tagging a first name in the greeting. It means gaining a deeper understanding of where they have visited, what their interests are, and connecting your value to that information in an authentic, meaningful way.

• Analysis: Developing trust in a relationship is like strengthening a bridge between you and your customer. It starts on shaky ground and then begins to gain strength as you continue to provide value according to their need in the moment. As you interact with your customer, it is important that you never stop listening. Listening or analyzing the feedback they provide in the form of interactions with you and your brand. This requires time and talent. The proper analysis of traffic and customer data will further ensure that you are a trusted provider. Data is a double-edged sword. It can make you a relevant star, or it can make your brand feel disconnected and irrelevant. Which leads us to our final point.
• Relevance: I was at the local coffee shop the other day, chatting with a friend. We were having a discussion about how many vacationers were stopping in. A gentleman overheard our conversation and tried to make a joke, but it turned out to be an awkward moment as we didn’t understand what he was referring to. This was not about his joke, but about the fact that in that moment we could not relate what he was saying to our conversation. This made his joke awkward and irrelevant. The point is, if you want to develop trust with your audience, you must be able to relate to them in the proper context.
  

  “Achieving such personalization requires knowing deep context: not just a customer’s demographic data but also the time and location she accessed content, the search terms she used to find it, the referring site that directed her toward it, and—most important—her behavior before, during, and after consuming it…” (source: John Kottenkamp)

This approach works. Maximizing each email marketing campaign begins with content that builds trust, is built on proper analysis and is relevant to the customer.

Relevancy is the marketer’s secret weapon, and the fastest path to revenue. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened and marketers have found a 760% increase in email revenue from segmented campaigns. (source: Campaign Source)

In summary, the ability to deliver your email marketing campaign is not based on whether you can sidestep spam filters. It is in your ability to develop trust with your customers. If you can not do this with confidence, take the time you need to develop your marketing and communication strategy with these important elements at the helm.

These recommendations are simply the tip of the iceberg. What are other ways you’ve discovered help your email marketing campaign get delivered? Share them in the comments below!

Regardless of this change, it still must maintain the highest service quality. And unfortunately the data doesn’t lie.

81% of study participants are unsatisfied with their healthcare experience.

This represents an immense gap. Yet, it also represents an immense opportunity. Patients, like customers, are seeking to connect and find value. For decades, physicians and healthcare workers have been perceived as cold, calculated and insensitive. They rush from one appointment to the next, not taking the time to truly understand how patients feel. Both in the physical and emotional sense.

“There is a misperception among providers about how well they are truly meeting consumer expectations,” said Jeff Gourdji, co-lead of Prophet’s health care practice. “Although they acknowledge its importance, providers are finding it challenging to focus on patient experience in the face of so many competing priorities.” (source: Loyalty-360)

How many of us assume we are adding value at each step of the customer journey? Organizations and healthcare providers alike can track and close this gap. A well developed marketing strategy and effective automation solutions can monitor activity and create a more aligned patient experience.

Patient Experience

But it begins with a clear picture of where the patient experience begins and where it ends. Each physician, practice or provider must see the journey from the patients perspective. And it starts long before the doctor opens the exam room door.

When this journey has been mapped out, there are clear intersections where the “brand” connects with the patient. Consider what value you are providing at each step. Where do patients go for more information? What pages of your website are getting the most traction? The most bounces? “But you don’t understand, I’m measured on how quickly I can get patients in and out and there are other priorities I’m responsible for.” Yes, this is true of every business. It may seem too simplistic, but patients don’t care about the competing priorities. They are seeking value, or in this case, the appropriate amount of compassionate care.

“It seems important, then, for physicians to have neither too much nor too little compassion. Aristotle put this succinctly when he wrote that, as a virtue, compassion should be shown ‘to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time.’ He didn’t define how much compassion is right: We have to decide that for ourselves.” (source: New York Times)

The concept of marketing is making it’s way into the healthcare lexicon. Recently I received an email from my primary care office. It was unexpected, so I opened it. It was a gentle reminder to get my flu shot. Wow, that was a well timed email campaign as we enter the cold and flu season. A few months later, I receive another email. Again, not expected. What kind gentle healthcare reminder might I receive today? An announcement that my primary care office is now providing “cosmetic injections”.

Talk about not knowing your audience. Epic fail. Simple patient segmentation would have revealed who would likely desire this service, making the content relevant.

Compassion

So it seems that the healthcare industry has their work cut out for them. They are responsible for ensuring all these important metrics are tracked and improved. And while doing so, exhibit the appropriate amount of compassion (or value) at the right time.

As marketers, what can we learn from this challenge? We are in a service-based industry. We track and manage many marketing priorities as well. But there is one thing we can not miss. We must connect our product or service and add value at each step of the customer journey. How?

Gavin Francis sums it up quite well;

Compassion means “together-suffering” or “fellow-feeling” — a sense of identification we feel when imagining another’s pain. The word “patient” means “sufferer,” and at its most basic level the practice of medicine could be described as the attempt to ease mental and physical pain.

We must seek to understand and connect value to our audience. When we make this connection, we identify with the challenges they face. This is what marketing is all about.

Pointless because you drive people away, obnoxious because you make your organization something people don’t just passively ignore but actively dislike; and obviously this is extremely harmful to your future success. This is not marketing automation. This is not marketing done right. This is applying old techniques to new technology. Your marketing automation is much more than a one-way blasting of information. You should not organize your marketing campaign to be constantly shouting at your audience. You must do more with your marketing automation software.

Marketing automation when done correctly can be a tool to engage and interact with your potential customers. You can encourage, support, and respond to their needs based on their action or even inaction. “But how?” you ask. Here are three quick suggestions to make sure you do marketing automation right.

1. Send Future Emails Based on Previous Interest

One of the most common mistakes when organizations start to use marketing automation is the ability to send unlimited emails automatically to potential customers. This is a bit like handing the keys to a high-end sports car to a first-time driver. The sheer power and awesomeness of this shiny new toy is too much to handle and things can quickly get out of control. Sending repeated emails based on too sensitive of triggers is the main and most obvious way that marketing automation gets abused. This is talking without listening epitomized. This behavior is obnoxious and potentially harmful. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use marketing automation effectively and even for email delivery.

Properly sent and timely emails based on well-defined triggers are critical parts of a good marketing campaign. Just be sure to listen and build your campaigns based on user interaction. Did they open the previous email you sent? Did the click a link you shared in the email? Use these triggers as ways to determine interest for future emails. Be smart in your marketing.

2. Be Consistent Without Being Obnoxious

The second problem that can frequently arise with new marketing automation users is the over usage of lead touch points. This means contacting your leads to frequently. Don’t inundate your new leads with too much information too quickly. Remember that you want to implement a drip campaign not a flood campaign. If you bury your new leads in a torrential amount of welcome emails, request for feedback, product suggestions and more you will drown your potential customer. Don’t be obnoxious.

Instead be timely and be consistent. Set a marketing plan that properly touches your leads and shares information at appropriate times. This might mean a monthly newsletter with relevant information, or maybe this means a bi-weekly email with completely different content each time. This is consistent, friendly interactions instead of obnoxious and overbearing information dumps. This step also requires that you listen to your potential leads. (See Suggestion 1 above)

3. Don’t Hover

The last suggestion for building a successful marketing automation campaign involves trust. You need to trust your campaign workflows, you need to trust your personas you’ve built, you need to trust the process. If you don’t trust in what you’ve built and organized you will find yourself hovering over every potential lead and new site visitor. You’ll find yourself obsessing on what they are doing, and jumping in to provide more information and push a decision. This is the used-car-salesman approach to marketing and it’s ugly. No one likes to be hard sold like this; your marketing automation prevents you from doing this…if you trust what you’ve created. Listen to what comes back.

Marketing automation when done right will bring your best leads to the surface when they are ready to be contacted. They will be nurtured by your marketing funnel; adding points, giving weight, improving their readiness, until the time comes when they are turned over to you for direct engagement. Your marketing should handle everything else so you don’t need to hover.

These three suggestions will help you cut through the marketing automation madness and help you build a powerful marketing campaign strategy that will keep you from sabotaging your own progress. Be smart, Be consistent, Be trusting. And watch your marketing automation do what you intend for it to do.

Mautic is an open source marketing automation platform built for you. Mautic will help you organize your marketing campaigns, build successful marketing strategies, and nurture your leads effectively. Mautic helps you listen to your customers.

Marketing automation is a powerful process and can produce tremendous gains for your business or organization; that is…when it’s used properly. Any strong marketing campaign requires the same basic principles: objective, strategy, optimization, and implementation. The rudiments of marketing most definitely still apply when utilizing a marketing automation platform, in fact they are even more important when we consider the number of “moving parts” involved in a well-built automation campaign. This leads us to the first step in addressing the learning curve.

1. Sharpen Your Marketing Knowledge.

Marketing is a catch-all term for the fields of study, processes of engagement, and creation of interest surrounding the message and image of your products, services, and information. It’s all about getting your message to the right ears and drawing interested customers to your brand over your competitors.

“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” – Lee Iacocca

Without marketing know-how it is virtually impossible to get the word out, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start marketing with what you do know. You’ve created something you think people will want, but why do they want it? What problems does your product or service solve, and what makes it different or better than the others? If you can answer those questions then you are well on your way to creating killer a marketing plan.

That’s just the beginning of your marketing automation journey, the next step is to educate yourself. Find marketing materials, take classes, read books and start simple with your marketing. No one starts off as a guru – we are all learning and growing. What that means to you is that the first step in writing a marketing strategy is to immerse yourself in marketing education, get back to the basics and hone your skills before you implement marketing automation. No marketing campaign, automated or not, can succeed without a thoughtfully written educated strategy.

2. Learn The Basics -What Is Marketing Automation & How to “Do” Marketing Automation

Before you can understand how marketing automation fits into your overall marketing plans, you must first understand what marketing automation accomplishes. Familiarize yourself with the basic principles and features of automation and put that in context with what you already know about marketing.

Generally, marketing automation is a means of taking the tedious or repetitive tasks, like monitoring leads or sending emails, and automating them. While marketing automation includes many other functions such as: social media tracking, lead behavior tracking, scoring, and 1:1 real-time marketing, it is primarily a smarter, faster, and larger means of reaching specific individuals with an automated series of event triggered communication workflows. Of course, you will learn all about the details and how to make the process more effective, but for now check out marketing automation education materials to learn more.

If you choose to do marketing automation research by visiting service providers sites, don’t let persuasive sales reps push you to make a decision, lay out all of your options for your marketing solutions before you commit any of your budget. Find out what features your business requires and determine what means you will use to achieve their implementation. Whether it is you or an employee who will be focusing on marketing automation, training is the most vital element in your future success.

3. Invest in Training

Your real primary investment should be in training and the development of your general marketing skills, alongside marketing automation education. No matter how much money you spend on the capabilities of your marketing automation software, your campaign is only as good as your ability to effectively address every detail of your marketing strategy.

If you do not have the staff to invest in marketing automation training, you might have to find a different course of action. This could mean hiring specialized marketers, increasing your investment in training, or outsourcing your marketing automation to professionals. Regardless of what course you choose, learning the processes is a must.

Whatever your experience in digital marketing, development, or automation, you should make every effort to seek out education through training materials and hands-on development. Some marketing automation providers offer access to learning materials and user group meetings, but only if your pay their exorbitant service rates. Free training resources are available through a nonprofit organization. Mautic is an open source marketing automation community, whose goal is to create community support for marketers, educational resources, and training courses to support their free marketing automation software.

4. Build Your First Campaign

Once you’ve learned the basics and gone through some training, it’s time for you to put it all together and build your first campaign. This is an exciting time as you finally get to put your new skills to work. Start with the most basic of your campaign building skills; the key points of your strategy. From there you can further develop each of your campaign points in the framework of marketing automation. Just remember to start simple.

• Create your campaign strategy
• Define your elements
• Design simple emails, landing pages and forms
• Build your workflow
• Measure your results.

Remember, it’s your first campaign, so it may not be perfect, but it can become much better if you learn from the experience and use the data you get to make your next campaign even better. With this approach, continued learning, and a positive attitude, you are well on your way to becoming a marketing automation professional.

5. Analyze Your Campaign Results

The feedback you get from your campaigns is what drives marketing automation progress and leads to long term development and success. The most powerful brands utilize the data from every measure of a campaign’s activity and engagement. Metrics help marketers to design better sites, landing pages, keywords, email subjects, and any other measurable factor. These metrics allow brands to interpret engagement and consumer behavior in order to consistently improve every detail of their campaign’s design, content, and delivery. The goal is to achieve an optimal level of engagement, by separating your market from the crowd, meeting your leads wherever they are in the customer lifecycle.

As you continue to develop your marketing automation skills, and the ability to interpret your campaign reports, you will find more ways to collect valuable data. One such strategy is that of “split campaigns” or A/B testing. By creating two slightly different campaigns and comparing the resulting analytics in defined element fields, marketers can quickly adapt their content or design to their customer’s preference. These unconscious influencers make all the difference with marketing automation, where customer behavior triggers exactly the action you need to drive your message home and to start turning leads into conversions and revenue. Developing your marketing automation skills even further makes you that much more powerful as a marketer and yields stronger growth, so what’s next?

6. Specialize & Optimize Your Marketing Automation Skills

Once you have acquired a good understand of the things we have just discussed you will find that each campaign element can be more effectively tested and designed. You may have found what you are already good at, whether it’s landing page design, content writing, customer cycle “drip flow” campaigns, or email campaigns, but what about the elements that could be better?

The key to improving individual campaign elements is in optimization. Whether it’s SEO (the ability to influence the visibility of your website or web page to a search engines parameters or “organic reach”) or Content Optimization (understanding the way that keywords influence search result, as well as meta-descriptions, alt-tagging, and increased credibility), understanding optimization tactics is crucial to continued development of your campaigns.

One powerful tool that marketing automation provides is the ability to personalize your campaign content. Whether it’s a list, segment, or individual, personalization leads to conversions. Meet your customers with content that applies to them, addresses their unique needs, and caters to their particular buying process. With campaign personalization, you content reach and conversion will see their highest possible levels. So keep collecting that data, continually adapt your content to fit your target’s needs, and never stop looking for opportunities to optimize.

Whether you’re a small business owner, enterprise, nonprofit, marketer or student, learning the skills needed for marketing automation has tremendous power and value. The results you can produce with the right help and a strong strategy will make any and all effort worth your investment.

Find the resources you need to understand marketing as a whole and build a solid foundation with core principles. From that point you can approach marketing automation with context and direction.

Make sure your investment in training matches that of your expectation. Learning the principles and practices of marketing automation is a worthy and attainable goal.Don’t throw all of your money at a service provider if you can do it yourself. Use free open source software to develop your skills, it’s much easier with the right resources and a strong community to offer support.

• Start building campaigns and practicing your marketing automation skills.
• Send your “baby” on its way and make sure to analyze the valuable data you from your campaign
• Specialize your marketing automation skills through optimization techniques and campaign testing
• Keep learning!

Nothing worth having is easily attained, but don’t make it harder for yourself. Use your new skills to work smarter, automate your marketing, increase your reach and achieve measurable growth. Marketing automation isn’t a system you will perfect in a day, but it is well worth the effort. Tackle the learning curve head on by investing your time, not your budget, and see what do-it-yourself marketing automation can do for you.

UPDATE: This Hangout is now available to be watched in our archives.

Marketing automation can be a difficult process to approach and you may feel a bit overwhelmed when you first begin to use a program like Mautic. Growing your business with marketing automation is an worthy investment and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to learn the process, implement the techniques and start to see real results.

Mautic is a new and exciting open source platform which allows every business regardless of size the ability to use marketing automation. You finally have access to an affordable open source tool with the power to change your business and we want to help you use it.

Join David Hurley, found of Mautic, as we get ‘Hands On with Mautic’ and take a step by step walkthrough of the software. This week we will be looking at the processes of creating emails for your campaign.

It’s time for you to start growing your business with Mautic so don’t miss any of the helpful information as we dive into the functions and features of the software. Get your questions answered and start revolutionizing the way you do business!

Details

Google+ Hangout scheduled for Wednesday March 4, 2015 at 2:30PM EST (Check local time). Signup for the webinar and visit our Google+ Community Page

Catch up on the previous webinars and check out the latest webinar ‘Hands on With Leads‘.