Share Insights to Improve Overall Marketing Effectiveness

3 Pillars of a Successful Email Program

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53% of brands take 2 weeks or more to produce a single email. However, the work leading up to getting an email out the door is only part of the email marketing equation.

Here at Litmus, we believe there are three crucial pillars to email marketing success—and only when you master all of them can you build a state-of-the-art email program that can positively impact your entire marketing mix.

53% of brands take 2 weeks or more to produce a single email.53% of brands take 2 weeks or more to produce a single email.

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POST

PERFORMShare insights to improve overall

marketing effectiveness

Set your email campaigns up for

success

Use email insights to optimize future

campaigns

PRE

3 Pillars of a Successful Email Program

PERFORM: Share Insights to Improve Overall Marketing Effectiveness

Now, let’s dive into our third pillar

This is the third in our ebook series, Three Pillars of a Successful Email Program. You can access the first pillar here and the second pillar here.

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PERFORMShare Insights to Improve Overall Marketing Effectiveness

Moving email to the center of your marketing machine unlocks insights hiding in plain sight.

Up until this point in the Three Pillars series, we’ve been planted squarely in the world of email. Now it’s time to break down the silos and share insights about what’s working in email with strategic leaders to help improve the effectiveness of other marketing channels.

In the “perform” stage, marketers and leaders from all channels come together to share what they’ve

learned about customers. While the exact tactics that each member uses across the marketing mix vary,

their mission to learn about the audience and put forth the strongest messaging is the same.

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What sharing email insights can do for you

Spend time and money more efficiently

A blog post we featured in an email generated incredible engagement. We used this insight to inform our strategy and featured that topic as a call to action in a social and paid media campaign. The result? We more than doubled our average click-through rate!

Cynthia Price,VP Marketing, Litmus

The need to test what works with your

audience will never go away, but there is a

way to make the most of it. By using insights

from dedicated subscribers, you can focus

marketing spend on messaging that you

already know resonates.

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When everyone is working within their marketing teams, it can be easy to lose a

collaborative spirit across the organization. Your company can go farther, faster,

if everyone is collaborating and sharing insights over their common goal.

Focus your marketing talent on the same cause

We have to focus on the customer journey because if we focus on each marketing channel in isolation, that’s when we give the customer a disjointed journey. Email is now and will be in the foreseeable future the backbone to the customer.

Kath Pay,Founder, Holistic Email Marketing

Since your email subscribers are your most loyal and consistent audience, you can use

email to spot content trends and messaging preferences before other marketing channels.

Then, apply what you know works to other, more costly marketing channels.

Spot customer trends early

The rate at which your email recipients forward or share your email with others may not seem all that significant, but it’s arguably one of the most important metrics you should be tracking.

Lindsay Kolowich,HubSpot

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How email marketing can inform cross-channel strategy

Your customers perceive your entire marketing mix as a

single company experience—they aren’t analyzing your

channel activity in parts. So, all of your channels need

to share what they’ve learned to create a cohesive and

actionable experience. This collaboration goes beyond

“they like when we use emojis in our subject lines,” too.

The information that the email team can uncover can

drastically shape your company’s strategies.

• The email team can identify the most engaged (and high-spending) customers via revenue

per subscriber and lifetime value. From this segment, your paid ads team can create a

lookalike audience to target more efficiently.

• Emails that touch on some of the “soft skills” your subscribers are trying to learn

have engagement rates twice as high as tactical newsletters. Realizing that these are

compelling topics, your marketing team creates a panel discussion video series on those

challenging topics.

• After A/B testing upsell email messaging, there are different winners among each customer

segment. With this information in hand, the sales team can tailor their focus and approach

for different customer types.

• Customers that showed a higher interest in a particular feature in an email have higher

retention rates. Noting this connection, the product team puts more attention on the

critical element during the in-app product tour.

Ideas to put into action

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How collaborative is your company?

All the hard work that other teams do

day in and day out can have an impact

on your email, too. Are other teams

prioritizing time to analyze their results

and share what they’ve learned?

Does your marketing team recognize

your email subscribers as a valuable

source of information about what your

target audiences are interested in

hearing about? It’s crucial that everyone

knows they play an equally valuable role

in marketing. Putting email insights in

the center doesn’t mean that other

channels are less worthy.

While the three pillars of email place email marketing, and its insights, in the middle of your marketing

program, this relationship is a two-way street. To set you up for success, we suggest you check how each

team works together.

First, and we admit most obvious, is the question of whether or not your email department is currently

sharing insights. Sending a company-wide email with results from the Black Friday email campaign once

a year doesn’t count. If your email organization isn’t regularly sharing updates to marketing, sales,

and product teams, then there’s room for growth.

Once you start using email insights to improve your other marketing channels, and vice versa,

you may wonder how you went so long without realizing these insights were right in front of you.

Shifting the way your marketing teams work together and how leadership views the role of email

won’t happen overnight, though.

So, how do you make this happen at your company? Let’s assess your current situation.

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Everyone’s Role in the Three Pillar SystemWe’ve walked you through pillar 1, pillar 2, and now,

pillar 3. But how do you make them work? People, of

course! For some organizations, implementing the three

pillar system will only entail a few tweaks. For other

companies, though, this new way of thinking could be a

drastic change. No matter how your email team works

now, it’s important to remember that the three pillar

system is a community effort.

The three pillars, and particularly sharing insights in the

“perform” stage, aren’t meant to double the workload of

email marketers. In fact, they should make everyone’s

work more efficient and effective.

Email marketers don’t need to become sales experts and paid social marketers won’t take on product development.

Each department and team, from email to social, sales to development, and everything in between,

will stick to implementing the skills they already have. Email marketers don’t need to become sales experts,

and paid social marketers won’t take on product development. What will happen, though, is everyone will

start sharing what they’ve learned so that everyone can benefit from the group’s hard work.

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Helpful ResourceEmail Marketers, It’s Time to Break Out of Your Silos

Email efforts and insights may be at the center of the marketing machine with the three pillar

process, but a great pre- and post-send process makes this important role easier for email

marketers. Even within the email team, each individual plays a valuable role.

The basis of innovation and insights begins in the email creation process. Designers, developers,

and email specialists are on the front lines. These roles impact future learning by keeping

up-to-date with the latest best practices and exciting tactics. Designers and developers

implement ideas and set up every campaign for success.

After each campaign has been sent, the responsibility shifts to email managers and leaders to

uncover insights. Having a vision for unanswered questions and a plan to review email metrics

are critical at this stage. After analyzing each campaign’s performance, the email manager has to

decipher what it means for future campaigns as well as for the rest of the marketing organization.

Email Marketers

Since the three pillar system is a collaborative approach, everyone in the organization plays a role. Here’s what to expect, by role:

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Dear marketers, sales pros, and product developers—just because there will be customer

lessons coming from different places, doesn’t mean you have to relinquish control of your

channel. The three pillar system doesn’t give all decision-making powers to email marketers.

It simply equips you with information that can boost the effectiveness of your campaigns.

If a tactic has worked very well with the target audience in an email before, chances are it

may deliver above-average results in your channel as well.

All you need to reap the benefits of

this system is to be open and willing

to receive insights. Once you’ve

learned a new piece of information

from the marketing team, you can

implement it as you think best.

You may use the ideas to create or

edit campaigns, prioritize spending,

or adjust targeting.

While every sales and marketing tactic has its benefits, email is uniquely poised to give

a more in-depth look at some of the most engaged and aligned audience members.

60% of people prefer to get promotions in their email over social media, and email is

also more conducive for personalized communication at scale.

But it’s a two-way road: In a truly integrated organization, your knowledge too should inform

other teams. Each department interacts with a different subset of customers at varying

times, which gives you a unique perspective. Just as email marketers share insights with

you, your team can take the initiative to share what you’ve learned with the email team.

Other Marketing + Sales Teams

Helpful ResourceUnderstanding Your Most Powerful Marketing Channel:

The Power of an Email Subscriber

You may use the ideas to create or edit campaigns, prioritize spending, or adjust targeting.

While leadership and members of the C-Suite aren’t hands-on in finding and executing

email insights, they do have an important role. Breaking down barriers between teams and

encouraging consistent collaboration is a cultural change as much as it is a strategic one.

As a leader, your job is to help facilitate and uphold communication. In exchange for helping

open the lines of communication between marketing teams, you get to optimize your

marketing spend and improve the effectiveness of your entire marketing mix.

In your role you’ll act as both an example and an enforcer. In a poll of 500 marketers about

their biggest challenges, poor coordination between other channels and departments was

the 2nd most popular response with 16.7% of votes. Think about who on each team can

spearhead this change, what you can do to support communication, and how you can

assist team members as they change their workflow.

As a leader, you also need to make sure that all of your teams have the tools to succeed.

The other top challenges marketers face are a lack of quality data and integrations,

and insufficient staffing. Talk to your teams about their current workflows, where they

feel limited, and what tools would make their work more efficient. By inspecting tools

through the lens of the three pillar system with a focus on actionable insights,

you’re more likely to choose the best tools on the first try.

The C-Suite

Helpful ResourceTips for Marketing Leaders: Help Your Team Overcome the Biggest

Email Marketing Challenges

In a poll of 500 marketers about their biggest challenges, poor coordination between other channels and departments was the 2nd most popular response.

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The three pillars of a successful email marketing

program are a new take on a familiar process. By

simply recognizing the power of the email subscriber

and breaking down silos between teams, you can use

insights that have been hiding in plain sight to improve

your marketing effectiveness.

What does putting email in the center of your marketing

machine look like in action, though? If you are committed

to changing your perspective and want to start today,

here are four ways to get started.

Wrapping Up

One side effect of staying within your silo is that you probably only have a vague idea of

what other departments do. If you struggle to see how email insights can impact other

channels, then host a learning day. Have each marketing team or department share some

of their “lingo,” tell the group what questions or challenges they’re facing, as well as any

upcoming campaigns or initiatives. Hearing what other teams are looking for may make

noticing useful pieces of information easier.

Host a learning day

Each department has its own priorities and goals, but coming up with a few shared

initiatives boosts the feeling of collaboration. Shared goals could be as small as letting

other departments know when your team will be working on a big project, or as big as your

company’s revenue goals. Leadership should work with each group to make sure they know

how their efforts contribute to the big goal so that they can stay on track.

Create shared metrics or goals

4 ways to put email at the center of your marketing machine:

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It’s a romantic and unrealistic idea to think that each team will share insights with other

departments as they arise. Especially as everyone is getting used to working beyond their

silos, having structure around communication is key. The best frequency and format will

depend on your team, but make time on your calendar to work together. You may not have

eye-popping insights to share at every meeting, and that’s okay. The main goal is to build a

habit of sharing what you know and what you need. You can also set up more informal and

frequent collaboration, like a shared Slack channel.

Stick to a collaboration schedule

Company leadership plays a critical role in changing culture and strategy from the top down.

It may help for each department or marketing channel to assign a representative that has

regular meetings with the C-suite. The representatives can share progress as well as where

support may be needed. Having direct contact with upper management also sends a signal

that the company takes collaboration seriously.

Get leadership involved

Learning to find and use email insights for the good of the entire marketing mix may take some

time, and that’s okay. The best place to start is by sharing these ideas with your entire team

and start having discussions about putting it into practice.

Set up your campaign for success. Use email insights to optimize future

campaigns. Share insights to improve overall marketing. It’s all a part of

@litmusapp’s guide to the 3 Pillars of Email.