I was just featured on Northwestern University's thought leader series on digital marketing. The topic was how retailers are embracing digital as fast as possible to not only counter the Covid crisis, but improve the customer's UX in the process.

It’s easy to market to loyalty program members; their extensive history with your brand provides you and your marketing team with the necessary data to know what they love, what they hate, and what they’re probably in the market for next. That said, how do you extend that same level of customer service to your newest customers, or even those who haven’t made a purchase yet? In 2020, everyone is looking to AI for marketing help. Sure, a great marketing platform can help segment your database and schedule your content, but it can’t perform at its best if the customer data in your database is a little lackluster.

Email is effective, has great ROI and customers depend on it for information in times of crisis

You may be asking yourself: should I write to my customers about Covid-19? What about sending promotional emails? Is email still a good way to communicate? The answer: Email marketing was there to help in 2008 and it is indispensable now.

Marketers Guide to Effective Email: Part 5

Analytics is the key to an effective email marketing program. Email campaign analytics usually have numbers for the basics including:

Marketer's Guide to Effective Email: Part 4

It’s easy to forget – email marketing is part of a brand’s Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC). The best email marketers see email holistically along with mobile, social and offline marketing. The broader our vision of email, the more successful we can be in the eyes of the customer. The customer sees brand not channel. How does email integrate with Customer Service? Field sales? Store associates? Each of these touchpoints can- and should trigger an email. If we ignore this, we will never get off the wheel of batch and blast and our customers will become numb to email communication.

Marketer's Guide to Effective Email: Part 3

The best email marketers I know welcome “failure.” What I’m referring to is cultivating a culture of continuous testing where failure is seen as learning. Marketers play offense by testing everything and that moves the ball forward. But failure is a way to play defense and a test result can be an early warning not to rollout a message, price change or offer and make a costly mistake.

Marketer's Guide to Effective Email: Part 2

Marketer's Guide to Effective Email Part 1:

The most successful marketers leverage email to strengthen the bond with their best customers. Customers seek out brand emails in a cluttered inbox. Customers feel like they are having a conversation with the brand. We have spent years analyzing email strategies from the best marketers in the world to uncover five things that make them great: