Lynnette Fusilier will be speaking on Email Marketing at Engage 2018, which will take place March 8th, 2018 in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and let us know what you do for a living.
In 2004, I launched my first business, an online directory that connected folks living in or moving to Portland with the people, places, and things that made them feel at home. And for 12 years, I dedicated myself to learning the nuts and bolts of email, social, and content marketing; web development, and SEO. I was lucky to have the guidance of local consultants and organizations, and a fantastic team to implement what I learned. It wasn’t always pretty, but my learning curve is my best feature and, over time, people saw what we built and asked us to help them do it too. And then life happened: my business and personal partnership fizzled, and I was forced to start a new business with a new target market (Hello, non-compete!).
Portland Localist launched in April 2016 and, initially, offered content, social, and email marketing consulting and services to realtors, mortgage advisors, and other real estate-related professionals. But then I realized how much I hated social media (seriously, it’s gross out there) and decided to focus exclusively on email marketing and automation because email is the most direct and personal relationship building tool there is and automation makes it possible to provide a consistently exceptional experience for subscribers.
Blah blah blah. ? For a better understanding of what I do for a living, take a look at this week’s work queue:
1) write weekly email campaign and blog post
2) organize contacts and import into CRM; integrate with email service provider (precursor to email program design)
3) update pop-up form
4) create automations triggered by the purchase of specific products
5) develop content strategy and core lead magnet (ongoing)
6) analyze survey results
2) How does a company know what the right cadence and frequency is for their email marketing?
They don’t. Getting to know the humans behind the inboxes is mission critical in determining the right cadence and frequency for your email program. When, what, and why do your subscribers want to hear from you? Are you helping them or annoying them? Are you giving subscribers the option of opting down instead of out? There’s more to email marketing than the number of emails you send; you better serve your subscribers when you provide the right information at the right time. A good email program, in my opinion, strikes a balance between automation triggered by subscribers’ actions (abandoning shopping carts, visiting a specific product page, etc.) and personal emails delivered at intervals they expect—provided content shared is always relevant and valuable to the subscriber.
3) How can a marketer improve their chances of getting their email noticed in a deep and full inbox?
Send emails from your name and email address, don’t use a role-based email (marketing@portlandlocalist.com), and include your company name.
Use merge tags to personalize the “to” field with the subscribers’ names
Write your subject line before you write the body of your email. This ensures you deliver what you promise in the subject line.
Create short (28-39 characters) but sweet subject lines. Ask questions, create a sense of urgency, use numbers or lists, add a lil humor, pique curiosity, be vulnerable and relatable. Use emoji but don’t overdo it. ?? Avoid spam words (CHEAP!!! FREE!) and mix up your subject line type so it doesn’t get stale.
Get to know your subscribers’ preferences, pain points, and personalities so you can craft compelling, relevant subject lines (and email messages).
Write preview text that teases your subscribers into reading more.
Personalize your subject line and email message using merge tags (First name, company names, etc.).
Track your subject lines so you can see what works best and how often you’ve used that subject line type so you don’t overdo it.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.