With email marketing being consistently important in the marketing realm, many services have blossomed to aid businesses in their email quests. Inboxroad was able to get in touch with the founder of a service dedicated to providing value in the email marketing strategies of small business owners.
Rachel is a “corporate escapee” who founded her own email marketing service: Gal Marketing Agency. She “spent the last 8+ years in the corporate world in various industries like tech, financial, professional sports, and the non-profit space.” Through Gal, Rachel is “determined to help small business owners implement enterprise level email strategies into their business.”
Everyone’s start with email is different. We asked Rachel how she ended up in the industry, and her reply highlights the substance email marketing provides in any sector.
“Over the last 8+ years as a marketer, I have run countless digital marketing campaigns that included ppc, content, event-based marketing, direct mail, and email. The number one consistency across all my successful campaigns was that email marketing moved the needle. So I started to dive into email marketing even further and learned how incredibly valuable a solid email strategy is for a company. Ultimately, my experience as an automation manager, email strategist, and campaign manager led me to launch my own email marketing agency to help business owners create their own email strategy for themselves.”
Shiny Object Syndrome
When we asked about her opinion on the idea that email may be a form of marketing that is possibly overlooked, or even neglected, Rachel touched upon the notion of “shiny object syndrome”.
“Email marketing has NEVER been the sexiest tool in the marketing toolkit, but it has been by far the most reliable and proven tactic – one that isn’t controlled by an algorithm or monetary input.”
Gateways & Metrics
Before delving into email strategy, any team needs a solid foundation to get started. Rachel elaborates upon the ways that struggling teams can effectively enter the email marketing gateway.
“A great starting point for a solid email strategy is being able to clearly identify your customer journey. What is your ideal customer struggling with? What are their pain points? And what makes them convert? The beauty of email marketing is that once you have identified your customer journey you can curate the experience for them through any entry point into your business. Without understanding that about your customer, you are left sending unsegmented, irrelevant emails to people that won’t open.”
Gal Marketing Agency’s founder also clarifies the relevant metrics crucial to the email marketing space.
“That is all related to the benchmarks you have established and which KPI’s they align with. I always tell my clients – you won’t use the same benchmark open rate identified by your welcome sequence as you would for your newsletters or your sales emails. They are all different “open rate” behaviors that will tell you different things. So understanding what action you are measuring and what behaviors drive those engagements is crucial. For example, if no one is opening your emails – your focus on your open rate is going to be more important than your click-rate because you have to solve why they aren’t opening first. Once you solve that, you can move on to optimizing your click-rate.”
The Future of Deliverability and Tips to Success
As Inboxroad specializes in email deliverability, we wanted to ask Rachel what trends she foreshadows for the coming years regarding the inboxing of marketing emails.
“Deliverability is such a pandora’s box topic. A lot of businesses do email marketing, but not all of them are doing it right – which in turn hurts the rest of us with deliverability.
I foresee focus on dedicated IPs for ESPs, hyper-personalization (beyond just adding a first name to your email text) and relationship marketing expanding in the future. Building trust with your email list and prioritizing relevant and personalized messages is going to be what makes them move your email from promotions to personal.”
Additionally, Rachel’s greatest tip to successful deliverability lies in segmentation.
“Prioritize segmentation and don’t let FOMO take over. So often your email reputation can be hindered by the need to meet a particular sales goal – which leads people to “blast” their emails out without a clear understanding of what that does to their sender reputation.”
The Future of Email Marketing & Important Skills to Develop
We asked Rachel about how she envisions the future of email, as well as the necessary skills that marketers should develop with the changing landscape of this sector.
“I have already seen AI trickling into the email marketing space – which is really exciting. The power of email marketing is being able to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time and with an added layer of personalization through AI – they will only become more powerful.”
She believes that the following skills are important to develop:
“A strategy driven mindset – being able to approach the customer journey without fear. Ability to project manage – when you are planning out automations and workflows you have to be able to see the big picture and the various tasks that come along.”
Rachel Recommends:
“I am a huge fan of podcasts so I’ll drop a few of my favorites here:
