Why Even Big Brands Struggle With Email

One thing I’ve noticed about ecom brands…

And really any kind of brand I’ve worked with…

… is that almost everyone is just copying what everyone else is doing in their niche or industry.

It’s kinda weird.

When I recommend a “best practice” based on what I know works the best…

Sometimes the response is “but that’s not what everyone else does.”

Well I sure hope you don’t want to be mediocre…

I hope you don’t want to be like everyone else…

A-V-E-R-A-G-E…

Because if so, then we’re not a good fit to work together.

Don’t forget:

I claim that I can crash your whole store with too many sales.

Not very many companies can do that…

Or even want that.

So listen up…

In my time working on email marketing with ecom brands…

And many other types of businesses…

I’ve noticed that even the biggest companies make some common email mistakes.

And I’ll walk you through them over my next few emails.

So let’s get started with the first one today:

• Bad Segmentation

See, when brands worry about “sending too many emails…”

Or “omg, an email a day is just way too much…”

My question is:

Are you sending too many emails…

Or just sending them to the wrong people?

Because when you send the same thing to 100,000 people all at once....

It’s hard for everyone on the list to connect with it personally...

But that’s what most brands do.

And it’s probably why their deliverability sucks too.

So people aren’t reading emails because:

1) The email sucks.

2) They don’t even make it to their inbox anyway.

Here’s another way to look at it:

Most brands are playing the role of a chef here…

And your email list is like a restaurant where you welcome people inside.

Imagine a chef cooking the same meal for everyone at a restaurant…

With no consideration to individual dietary restrictions or preferences.

Some may love it, others might hate it, and a few might even have allergic reactions.

They ain’t all coming back to that restaurant…

And some might take one look at the food and leave right away.

So that’s what’s happening when you send the same email to everyone.

And it sounds simple enough to segment your audience…

But there are a lot of filters to work with..

Lots of triggers, traffic sources, automations, offers, broadcasts, behaviors, actions and time frames…

And on and on and on.

All these factors complicate things.

It’s not a cliche when I say:

“Send the right message to the right people at the right time.”

That’s the formula you want up on your wall.

And then to achieve that formula properly…

You’ve got a bunch of diagrams and matrices and umbrellas and spiderwebs underneath it.

You might not know where to start…

So if you want help with your segmentation…

Hit reply and tell me your current situation.

-RCD