Carly Brantz - All in Good Taste: Effective Email Marketing

Editor's Notes

1. Let’s start with the right person. Whether you send marketing email like newsletters, promotions, coupons, and special offers, or transactional email such as purchase receipts, password resets, or order confirmations, treating all of your users the same actually does more damage than good, to your engagement and to your reputation.
2. I know from experience that one of the biggest challenges that marketers face is building your list. It seems like a quick fix to buy a list with thousands of email addresses to Don’t buy or rent lists! They will spoil your recipe because they haven’t given you permission or raised their hand. Ask direct questions on your sign-up forms - but not too many (this will allow you to segment) - At SendGrid we ask role and then segment our audience and our nurture campaigns for Marketers and Developers. Lastly, use proper opt in methods, such as double opt in or confirmed opt in to ensure subscribers want to receive email from you.
3. Segmenting your email streams and recipient lists so messages are relevant and valuable is a practice every email manager needs to master. Demographics - Who are your recipients, what do you know about them and the information they desire to receive? Behavioral - What are your users doing? What are the clicking on, when are they buying?  
4. It is counter-intuitive after you have spent so much effort building your list, to remove people but it’s in your best interest to remove them. If this makes you nervous, run one last re-engagement campaign before removing them, we had success with that at SendGrid. Pay attention to your metrics (if there are high unsubscribes or low clicks, it’s a clue you should re-evaluate this campaign. If they can’t find the unsubscribe link, they CAN find the “report spam” button. Finding the right person can be made easy through a preference center where the subscriber tells you exactly who they are and what they want.
5. 50% off was the most popular discount, followed by 10%, 75%, and then 40%.