Learn To Be Top 2% at Email 🧠

Maybe you have a new team or need a refresher on the 101’s of email. Here are my favorite courses to learn email…

To learn email:

 

• • Google Email Course 4.8 from 1,483 reviews

• • Advanced course to get 20X ROI on your Email

If you use MailChimp:

 

• • Best Free MailChimp Course

• • Best Paid MailChimp Courses

If you use Klaviyo:

 

• • Best Free Klaviyo Course

• • Best Paid Klaviyo Courses

List of Email Best Practices for 2023 from Zapier and SendGrid (good option if you need a lower-cost email option that still has a lot of functionality) 

Email Checklist and Effective Autoresponders to refresh your email efforts. 

Leading Email 💪

Your boss said this week, “We need to get better at email and you’re the person to take us to the next level”. Where do you start? What do you do?

 

1. 1. Start with What is your Email Marketing Stack? ✨

       

      1. 1. Your email tooling matters. If you are on Hubspot email as an Ecommerce brand we feel sorry for you (Even Though Gartner likes them). Lots of vendors can send emails but is it easy to use? Have a great price/value ratio? Regularly adding new features that you actually use? Do you have a unique industry requirement? Like HIPPA compliance or encryption? Or sync with your ERP system?
      1. 1. Does it connect easily with other systems you use? Zapier, CRM, sales tools, chat, SMS, and your back-end systems.
      1. 1. Does it reliably work? Do your customers receive your email (this is part of why we don’t like Hubspot)?

 

 

2. 2. Can you make your content pretty on Mobile?

       

      1. 1. Most emails are read on Mobile. Does your chosen email tool have the templates and features to make it EASY to send that email the CEO has to send suddenly at 6pm on a Friday? Way too many systems I see our clients using can take days to get an email out. If the system is that hard to use it gets used less. If it’s formatted poorly it gets read less. 

2. 2. The platform happily supports the content types you send.

       

      1. 1. Do you send lots of videos? Can it easily embed YouTube Shorts or other content formats that you need? A transaction-based email platform can struggle with attachments, DocuSign, and video. 

2. 2. Can you easily A/B test emails?

2. 2. Does it Segment subscribers?

2. 2. Is the reporting easy to understand and useful?

Once you have a platform that can repeatedly do what you need 7 days a week 52 weeks a year then let’s talk about your email Process. One of my favorite clients has NO email process. The CEO simply sits down, writes a note and it gets sent in MailChimp. This is a BAD idea because the end email is inconsistent. Your customers get flooded with email every hour of the day. You need a light but repeatable process to rise above your competitors and stand out. 

Alec’s Email Process Checklist: ✅

 

• • Know your audience and write uniquely for them

• • Segment so you’re not spraying and praying but adding value

• • Keep your list weeded just like a garden by auto-removing unengaged subscribers 

• • Use emotion to connect (my team jokes I love to add a dog as my goto emotional tactic)

• • QA and Edit each email via test sends

• • If you have a lineout send it to a clean landing page, resource, or video that you would enjoy going to. That VERY scary long-numbered URL that looks like SPAM and takes 30 seconds to load is not what your Mom wants to see. 

• • Engage and ask them for feedback

Ten Tips if You’re Managing Email 👀

 

1. 1. Don’t underfund Email (yes list cleanup is worth it). With the ROI so high I often see organizations underfund email and stay trapped at the 4:1 ROI level vs getting to the 20:1 ROI level by chronic underfunding. 

1. 1. Good content takes time and planning. It’s hard to outsource the soul of your brand voice. Using an in-house person has to be the voice of your brand. They can have an Agency or contractor make it beautiful and effective but if you’re not happy with your current email, start by looking in the mirror at the time and priority given to it by your internal team. 

1. 1. Don’t have AI write your email but it can help you scale. We can all detect the Chat GPT 3.5 content. Your customers can too. Use AI for research, personalization, images, A/B testing but don’t have it write your email. Email is a highly personal medium and the last thing your customer wants is a robot making them feel like a number vs a person you care about. 

1. 1. Less images are better for deliverability

1. 1. Focus on what is above the fold on your Customer’s mobile phone. If your customer is on smaller screen Androids and your designers are on big iPhones. Houston we have a problem. Go buy a cheap android. Do test opens on it.

1. 1. What % of your customers do you have an email for? SMS? Quizzes for better email capture until you reach 90%.

1. 1. Landing pages work for email as they do for Ads but they take more time and effort

1. 1. Own the shopping list via email. It’s a reminder medium and many use it as their ToDo list draft off that.

1. 1. Measuring maketh the Marketer. What are you measuring? Vanity metrics like open rates or % of traffic from email and sales per email?

1. 1. Don’t Rent. Own your first part data with segmentation and UTM codes. Email is personal use that to build a retargeting audience you own in GA4 vs rent from Facebook or Adwords.