Anyone can click the “send” button on an email campaign. However, successful email outcomes require more than cutting-edge technology, eye-catching email designs, and unlimited data.
What is missing? People having the personality attributes that position them for success. I’ve dealt with some excellent email marketers over the years, and they all have ten personality attributes that have helped them succeed.
What elevates email marketers from decent to great?
- Focus.
A focused email marketer envisions the function of email in the organization’s marketing universe, as well as how the channel contributes to growth and optimization outside of the marketing department. Part of this concentration is an insistence on allowing strategy to guide decision-making.
Strategic thinking is crucial for email success. One of my email mantras is, “Strategy comes before tactics.” This entails creating goals and objectives, as well as a plan for accomplishing them, before determining how to implement that approach.
Staying on track, keeping your eyes on the prize — however you define it – focus on your email strategy and avoid distractions to improve your chances of success.
An example of focused thought in action is creating an email reactivation campaign based on strategy rather than just when to send a reactivation email.
2. Service mindset.
The finest marketers don’t simply sell. They assist others in solving problems. It could be resolving a problem, answering a question, or assisting at the appropriate time. When you give clients what they want, they will give you what you want, from the initial purchase to long-term loyalty.
That’s the theory behind my helpful email marketing concept, which has defined my email strategy for the past 26 years: if you assist people achieve their goals, they will help you achieve yours.
Service-minded marketers prioritize their customers — who they are, what they want and need, and how to make them feel heard and appreciated — and tailor every aspect of their email strategy to that customer emphasis.
Naturally, the company’s demands and obligations factor into the equation. But, as I previously stated, the beauty of helpful email marketing is that when you help your clients, they reciprocate.
3. Curiosity
Curious marketers want to learn everything. What makes our clients choose to buy from us instead of someone else? Do they like our emails? What makes them more inclined to click through on an email? How can we make our emails more persuasive? What do other brands do? What is the newest technology? Could it help, or would it take our attention away from what is already working?
Curious marketers are hardwired to test. They are willing to do the work necessary to establish a testing program based on scientific principles and integrate it into the regular email workflow. They understand that testing can help them learn a lot about their clients and what drives them to interact. They then apply what they learned from testing to make more educated decisions about improving their email programs.
This is the foundation of what I call “holistic testing,” which goes beyond simple A/B subject line or copy testing to uncover deeper insights into client behavior. Because the email database represents your brand’s target market, the insights gained from holistic testing may be implemented throughout your organization.
4. An open mind.
Having an open mind is a corollary to curiosity. Open-minded email marketers approach the channel with high expectations. They take a long-term view of email’s benefits and reject the concept that email’s sole purpose is to generate immediate sales.
Keeping an open mind makes marketers more sensitive to new ideas and methods of doing things. Instead of using the same email playbook year after year, they are eager to experiment with new ideas as long as they are relevant to the program’s goals, objectives, strategies, and audiences.
Open-minded marketers value learning through testing and are willing to be proven incorrect if it leads to new insights or a better method to execute on email. They are also excellent complements to your marketing team!
Additionally, they are more inclined to use their email data appropriately. When examining data for truth, they are careful not to introduce their own prejudices. When an analysis is conducted in a neutral state of mind, the truth emerges.
5. Patience
From developing an active, engaged subscriber database to meeting program objectives, email marketing success can take time. Email marketers (and their managers!) must be willing to devote time and effort to the process.
Instead of focusing simply on short-term gains, such as sending just sales-driven emails, great email marketers practice “growth by marginal gains.”
A welcome email campaign is a real example of this principle. You may wait months to create the perfect email series. But consider all the opportunities you’ll miss in the meantime! Instead, begin with a carefully planned and tested welcome email and then expand on it.
Patience is also required during the testing process. You must be patient in order to develop a strong hypothesis, conduct a test long enough to achieve statistical significance and reproducible results, then analyze the findings.
6. Efficiency
Marketers, particularly email marketers, have traditionally been limited on time, human resources, and funds. Is there something they do not lack? Work!
Developing strategy, executing testing, launching advertising, staying up to date on industry trends and what the competition is doing may all lead to long days and the stress of never having enough time to catch your breath.
This is why efficiency-oriented marketers are so valuable. They can identify redundancies, gaps where errors can enter, and other time-wasters, and create efficient, adaptable, and repeatable processes for email deployment, testing, and strategy development.
7. Pragmatism
We typically regard email best practices as widely accepted principles of effective email marketing. However, they are neither flawless or unanimous, and some may even operate against the best interests of your email software!
Good email marketers are critical thinkers who follow the rules but recognize when a best practice does not benefit their email program. This pragmatic attitude does not imply that they will break the law or do anything that might jeopardize their deliverability or brand equity. However, they understand when to accept reality and devise practical solutions to problems.
Purists are the reverse of pragmatist marketers. They implement a best practice without considering if it benefits or harms their program, or the sources of the excellent practice. Purists may struggle to achieve success because they prioritize generic notions over the best interests of their clients or businesses.
Consider the evergreen hot button of email acquisition. A best practice is to avoid purchasing email address lists because they can be troublesome in terms of deliverability and do not include consent. However, many companies continue to do so.
The realistic approach might benefit the email program more. A pragmatist would argue, “I can’t stop the business development team from purchasing email lists; it’s legal in my nation. But I can control those addresses so that they do not harm my sender reputation or email efficacy. I’ll also work on improving organic acquisition and creating a business case to demonstrate to the business development team why these lists are a waste of money.
8. An adventurous approach.
These marketers enjoy staying up to date on industry advancements and competitor activity. The expression “We’ve always done it this way” isn’t in their vocabulary. They appreciate venturing beyond of their comfort zone and testing limits, but they don’t seek for the latest flashy goods to cure whatever is wrong with their email results.
This enhances open-mindedness and curiosity. Adventurous folks want to try a new test, experiment with a new automation, or improve an existing one. When paired with a pragmatic or efficient coworker, they can be a powerful force, but they should still be manageable for a focused marketer.
9. Anthropological predilection
That’s a fancy way of stating they understand why people do the things they do, whether they studied psychology or paid attention to what they discovered through testing and observation.
Their question is, “Would customers respond better to an email that promises to save money or one that appeals to their emotions?” instead of “How can I make my email template irresistible to both impulse shoppers and consideration-minded people?”
This attribute is based on psychological aspects of persuasion and motivation. These marketers employ their understanding of human behavior and action to create messages that use visual clues or accommodate cognitive quirks and biases, allowing them to appeal to a wide range of people. They understand that one size does not fit everyone.
10. Devotion
I saved this personality attribute for last, but it doesn’t make it any less important. To the contrary! It encompasses all of the other characteristics I’ve just mentioned and applies them to doing everything possible to expand and improve the email channel.
“Good enough” is insufficient for serious email marketers. They understand that the channel may provide more than just discounts and bargains. They urge that email receive its fair share of the credit for generating anything from sales to website traffic to meeting organizational objectives.
They use the notion of incrementality to assess business growth that can be linked to specific marketing activities such as email campaigns, in addition to brand equity.
They optimize an email’s sender name, subject line, and preheader not only to increase one-time opens, but also because they know the email’s “nudge effect” can compel customers to act simply by appearing in the inbox, even after the email has been received.
Devotion also illustrates how email marketers work to improve the service. They take pleasure in generating reports that go beyond just numbers and add context and insights.
These reports then assist them in developing a solid, convincing business case that they can present to management in order to secure further funding for growth-oriented enhancements.
Create a well-rounded email marketer.
Do you need to possess all of these characteristics to succeed? No. Finding a marketer with all of these characteristics would be a tall order. But you should have a few of them. If you work in a large team, you may have all of these covered.
You can also work on any weaknesses you have in order to improve your marketing abilities. You may not have a thorough knowledge of email’s particular attribution issues, or why people do what they do. But you can learn!