3 tips to elevate your brand’s email program

It’s easy to find yourself bogged down in the day-to-day rush of developing and sending email campaigns. Implementing a few simple processes can help your team identify efficiencies and opportunities you might not see when you are in the weeds.

Subscribe to your own emails. Mary Sohn, a member of the industry group Women of Email, recommended in its private Facebook Group to audit your subscription process at least annually. Going through the process of signing up for your own emails allows you to experience it from the user’s perspective.

Designate representatives from other departments to participate in an annual audit of the subscribing process as well. Their perspectives may help identify gaps in your email campaigns and journeys.

Look for API solutions. Are there new API integrations available that could help automate and speed up some of your processes? Women of Email member and marketing manager for demand generation at Advisor Group Jenn Clauss says email marketers should look for API connections to increase efficiencies.

Rather than having to manually pull data from one source to enter it into another system, is there a new API connection available? Start by looking into what API integrations between your systems are available, and what steps are required for setup. This can help eliminate the need for operating in multiple platforms.

For example, Clauss said, she set up two new APIs between LinkedIn Campaign Manager and Zoom for Oracle Marketing Cloud this year that enabled her “to reduce the number of campaign canvases necessary for my personalized lead gen campaigns from 44 to 17. I probably spent less than an hour on set up.”

Hypothesize. Test. Test again. Share what you learn. Kate Barret, owner of eFocus Marketing and author of E-telligence. Email marketing isn’t dead, the way you’re using it is and Women of Email member, encourages email marketers to strategically test different components of email campaigns.

In addition to testing, establishing a clear hypothesis with measurable KPIs will create learning opportunities that can be shared across an organization. Consider involving a finite number of stakeholders from other teams in the testing process for a fresh perspective.

Organizational processes often become more challenging than they need to be. Establishing a solid process for your email marketing program will help tremendously during periods of high-volume production — and will help email marketers manage incoming requests for campaigns in a more streamlined manner.

About The Author

Jennifer Cannon

Jennifer Videtta Cannon serves as Third Door Media's Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing and analytics to CRM and project management. With over a decade of organizational digital marketing experience, she has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.