Key takeaways
- Hold a weekly meeting to align the team, surface optimization ideas and keep everyone on the same page (brand managers, email marketers, etc.).
- Use a company-wide calendar and optionally siloed calendars as a planning guideline, be flexible for optimization, not because of poor organization.
- Schedule regular list maintenance to prune delinquent or out-of-date contacts so your audience view is accurate and average email impact rises.
- Centralize performance tracking (conversion, bounce, open, engagement metrics) because tracking isn’t optional if you want to optimize.
- Use RSS feeds (industry news, email marketing best practices, social buzz) to keep a steady stream of content ideas and stay on top of trends.
- A disorganized inbox operation leads to diminished returns and makes other strategies less effective.
Introduction
Email marketing is a great way to connect with your target audience – this is no big secret. Unfortunately, what often gets lost in the discussion surrounding the power of this practice is that letting your inbox operation fall into disarray all but guarantees a diminished return via this channel. To ensure that you don’t fall prey to this unwanted end result, let’s spend a few minutes covering the five best ways to keep your email marketing campaign organized and on track.
Commit to a Weekly Meeting
One of the best ways to keep your team organized, according to Ben Smith of Business 2 Community, is by committing to a regular weekly meeting. In doing so, you give everyone who is part of the process – brand managers, email marketing experts, etc. – a chance to sound off and provide insight into how best to optimize and refine this inbox-driven experience.
Aside from serving as a platform for innovation and improvement, weekly meetings also accomplish the simple, yet vital, goal of keeping everyone on the same page. It might not seem like much initially, but making sure that everyone has the same information on hand goes a long way toward promoting consistency throughout each phase of the email marketing process.
Leverage the Power of a Calendar
In terms of complimentary organizational assets, few such items pack quite the same punch as a company-wide calendar. For brands that are feeling extra motivated when it comes to organization, Smith goes on to note that having multiple calendars covering each silo or portion of an email marketing campaign gives your brand access to even more control and marketing insight.
Of course, don’t fret too much if you can’t keep up with the rigid outline of an email marketing calendar; it should merely serve as a guideline, after all. In fact, being fluid is far from a bad thing – provided that this flexibility comes from an optimization standpoint and not due to a lackluster commitment to organization.
Set Aside Time for List Maintenance
Another key factor that helps a brand like your own stay organized, as noted by ClickZ’s Jeanne Jennings, is regularly scheduled list maintenance. The leading concept behind this thought process is that having a cluttered, junky, or out-of-date list severely hampers your ability to enact other organizational strategies.
By regularly pruning delinquent contacts and other dead weight from your list, you’ll have a more accurate understanding of exactly what’s going on with your audience. This tactic also has the happy side effect of increasing the average impact generated by your email content via a more refined and active list of contacts.
Understand That Tracking Isn’t Optional
Going a step farther, the whole idea of keeping things on the straight and narrow also applies to the performance tracking side of email marketing. From conversion and bounce rates, to raw open and engagement numbers, having all of your metrics organized in one convenient location ensures that everyone is on the same page when it comes to campaign metrics.
Whether you do this in-house or via a dedicated email marketing platform is a decision based entirely on brand capabilities and preference. However, if you’d rather not rely upon guesswork and luck in your optimization and refinement operations, then saying “no thanks” to both of these choices simply isn’t a viable option.
Utilize RSS Feeds for Content Ideas
The final organization tip – utilizing RSS feeds to help keep a steady stream of quality content and ideas flowing into your email campaign – is designed to make the actual creation of emails and marketed messages a little easier on your end of the equation. The prime takeaway to pull from this suggestion is that having a way to keep on top of what’s trending can help your brand stay abreast of the latest trends and shifts within both the world of email marketing and the social circles that are relevant to your target audience.
As you set up a series of RSS feeds to fuel this approach, consider what kind of information you want to have readily available. Industry news, email marketing best practices, and even social buzz are all strong candidates that many brands lean on when enacting this strategy.
The big key here is that you shape and mold these streaming information services to suit your content needs and creative process. If you’re able to do this, and make the most out of the other suggestions covered here, then there’s no reason why you have to live with a cluttered and unorganized email marketing operation any longer.
FAQ
Invite everyone involved in the process (brand managers, email marketing experts, etc.). Use the meeting to share insights, suggest optimizations and ensure everyone has the same information which promotes consistency and sparks improvement.
Use a company-wide calendar as your primary planning tool. For extra control, create multiple calendars for different silos or campaign portions. Treat calendars as guidelines and stay flexible when changes are driven by optimization rather than poor organization.
Regular list maintenance means pruning delinquent contacts and other dead weight from your list. This yields a more accurate view of your audience and increases the average impact of your email content.
Organize and centralize key metrics such as conversion rates, bounce rates and raw open and engagement numbers. Having these metrics in one place prevents guesswork and enables effective optimization, you can track them in-house or via an email marketing platform.
Set up RSS feeds that deliver industry news, email marketing best practices and social buzz relevant to your audience. Shape those feeds to match your content needs and creative process so you always have trending topics and ideas to pull from.
A disorganized inbox operation leads to diminished returns and hampers your ability to execute other organizational strategies. Cluttered, junky or out-of-date lists reduce campaign effectiveness.
