Guest Contribution by Meaghan Dunham
What is mindfulness? And what does it have to do with email marketing?
At its core, mindfulness is simply the practice of being more aware of something.
So, what does that have to do with marketing?
Often, people perceive marketing as fake, gimmicky, and manipulative. And who would blame them? I bet you can name at least one person you’ve seen trying to market something and thought “Man, that person does not feel genuine AT ALL.”
In order to mitigate this perception, you have to get smart. You can’t just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks – that’s what got us into this mess in the first place. Instead, focus on three important ways to make your marketing strategy authentic and high vibe.
-
Segmentation
-
Personalization
-
Analysis
Segmentation
Segmentation is a crucial part of your marketing strategy. Essentially, it is the practice of grouping the people in your community into smaller, more specific groups. For instance, if you have a form on your website that collects emails for your newsletter, you’ll want to group all the people who filled out that form into a segment labeled “Newsletter Subscribers”.
Marketing campaigns like email sequences and social media advertising can target one segment of people or multiple segments, depending on the information you are sharing. This is where you can really shine — you can get super specific about the information you’re sharing in order to create authentic, lasting relationships.
Personalization
Personalization is a little tricky, especially if you have a large community. The most important part of using personalization in your strategy is to make sure it’s working correctly.
In an email campaign personalization is, essentially, using a smart feature in your system that matches information from a specific person to the email you’re creating. Most often, this is used to include someone’s first name in an automatically-generated email.
But, here’s the key, you have to do a little bit of management to make sure this is working effectively. For instance, if someone types their name into a form in all caps (MEAGHAN), your personalization will come across something like this:
“Hi MEAGHAN,
Have you ever noticed how it’s really annoying when someone doesn’t spell your name right?”
To quote Jimmy Fallon, “eww”. That may not seem like a big deal to some folks, but trust me, you will get backlash.
You also can’t rely on folks to read — calling myself out here! I mistakenly typed my first and last name into a form once (when it was only supposed to be my first name). Now, every time I get an email from this company, “Meaghan Dunham” is written 35 times (side note, don’t over-personalize by including someone’s name 35 times in a single email).
Key takeaway: Personalization helps you build a relationship with someone, but you need to make sure you’ve gotten their information correct. It all comes down to respecting that person enough to keep your database clean.
Analysis
Let’s face it: we can get stuck on metrics that don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Here are some things you should be paying attention to, depending on what channel you’re using to market your business. These will also tell you whether or not your message is resonating with the people in your community — a key part of developing an authentic, ethical strategy.
Email Marketing
Open Rate — Open rates are simply the percentage of people who received your email AND opened it. Typically open rates vary between 20 and 40 percent, although the smaller your list the higher your open rate will usually be. If you notice your open rates consistently dipping below 20 percent, it may be time to reevaluate your email strategy.
Social Media
Comments — More than anything else, I think comments (both on your feed and in DMs) will tell you how engaged folks are with your content. If you’re consistently seeing “Yaass! This resonates with me!” or “WOW! It’s like you read my mind!” you’re definitely creating content that’s reaching your ideal client.
Website
Unique Visitors* — Once you have your website up, you’ll want to start driving people to it via email and social media. You can track your website traffic by using Google Analytics. As your community grows, tracking the number of unique visitors per month will be important. You can use the metric for social proof, as part of your media kit, and to help you stand out as a thought leader in your field.
Congratulations for making it this far! I’m so glad you’re ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level. Remember, marketing your business doesn’t have to feel fake — if you put a little more time and a lot more intention behind HOW you present yourself it will make a big difference in the long run.
Want to start marketing your business right now? Download my free Welcome Email Template and start welcoming new email subscribers to your community with clarity, confidence, and ease!
*Unique visitors are the number of total people who visit your website each month. It only counts each person once — instead of counting someone each time they visit your website.
Hi, I’m Meaghan! I’m a Marketing Coach, currently living in Charlotte, NC. With a background in teaching and over 5 years of experience in corporate marketing, I decided to use my skills to develop marketing materials and resources that new business owners could ACTUALLY use. My attention to detail and crazy work ethic help me transform not only the success of a business, but the mindset of the person running that business. I’ll be your biggest cheerleader, your accountability coach, and your business strategist. Ok, now where are we meeting for coffee?
www.meaghanmdunham.com
@meaghan.m.dunham
facebook.com/meaghan.m.dunham