Gone are the days when marketing meant a self-oriented, one-way communication whose sole purpose was to shout out your best features. In the age of interactive communication, your customers are an essential part of your brand. Their real-time feedback, through email and social media, is your most accurate mirror. How can you make sure the image it reflects is going to satisfy you?
There are countless articles on this blog in which we emphasize how important it is for brands nowadays to focus not on themselves, but on their customers and their needs. In 2018 and the future, we believe this type of communication is the only one that will help companies develop genuine connections to their audience. From genuine connections come long-term, meaningful relationships. That means loyalty and, ultimately, it results in better business.
In his best-selling book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR,” author and marketing strategist David Meerman Scott states the same principle. Scott advises business owners to develop their companies around people’s needs, and marketers to convey their goal of being helpful and relevant.
“The new publishing model on the web is not about hype and spin and messages. It is about delivering content when and where it is needed and, in the process, branding you and your organization as a leader. When you understand your audience – those people who will become your buyers (or those who will join, donate, subscribe, apply, volunteer, or vote) – you can craft an editorial and content strategy just for them. What works is a focus on your buyers and their problems. What fails is an egocentric display of your products and services,” Meerman writes in his book.
“Who are my readers? How do I reach them?”
For many marketers, the question remains: how do I do that? Meerman invites us to adopt a practical and smart perspective: think like a publisher. When a journalist writes his article, what he has in mind is his readers. The questions he asks himself are: What information is my article revealing that no other article does? How will this information help my audience? How can I express it in the clearest and most attractive manner?
If you are an email marketer and are struggling to find your voice, try to ask your self these questions. Here is Meerman’s advice:
“To implement a successful strategy, think like a publisher. Marketers at the organizations successfully using the new rules recognize that they are the now purveyors of information, and they manage content as a valuable asset with the same care that a publishing company does. One of the most important things publishers do is start with a content strategy and then focus on the mechanics and design of delivering the content. Publishers carefully identify and define target audiences and consider what content is required to meet their needs. Publishers consider all of the following questions: Who are my readers? How do I reach them? What are their motivations? What are the problems I can help them solve? How can I entertain them and inform them at the same time? What content will compel them to purchase what I have to offer? To be successful, you need to do the same thing.”
Email verification, a marketer’s guarantee for inbox delivery
Great email marketers not only craft campaigns that are useful to their subscribers, but they also make sure those campaigns actually reach their intended audience. This is where email verification makes a difference: for a competitive price, an email checker will determine which addresses in your database are valid. At the same time, it will remove the ones that are fake, dormant, spam traps, disposable or belong to known email complainers, who have a history of marking messages as “Spam.”
Growing an email list is not enough; keeping it healthy matters more than its size, and a relevant, informative campaign will set a marketer apart.
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