McKinsey & Company wrote an interesting article about the effectiveness of email marketing (Click HERE for a link to the original article). This article states that email marketing is 40x more effective than Social Media when it comes to acquiring new customers. On top of that, the research shows that the rate at which emails prompt purchases is 3x that of Social Media and the average order value is 17% higher…what?!? Isn’t email going the way of the fax machine and slowly being fazed out? Aren’t companies shifting their budgets to Social Media?

With all of the buzz around Social Media and everyone being an “expert” in Social Media Marketing nowadays, you may think that email marketing is past its expiry date. Personal experience seems to go against the stats here as I am sure that many of you are frequently annoyed by the spam emails that countless companies send out. So what separates a good marketing email from a poor one? According to McKinsey there are 3 main components:

1. Focus on the Journey, Not the Click

“Why invest so much time in an e-mail only to drop the user onto a generic home page?”

You can send the most creative and engaging email ever crafted, but if it takes you to a wonky non-optimized webpage or some generic landing page then it was all for not. Customized landing pages and making sure that the website is optimized to mobile will increase acquisition rates. This feels a lot like the 7 Cs, namely Customization and Context. I think I speak for most Millennials when I say that we want what we want when we want it. That was a mouthful but it is just a nice way of saying that in an age where everything is a click away, patience is lacking. If the page loads up and is not optimized or if I am brought to a generic homepage, that will be the page that I exit from.

2. Share the Lessons

“If what we’re doing doesn’t work, we should celebrate finding that out.”

Test, test and re-test. There will be hits and there will be misses. The key here is to not only figure out what works and keep doing it, but to also figure out what doesn’t work and pivot. There are a few companies, which I will not name, that frequently send me the same type of emails. Nothing changes. Maybe I am the anomaly and the emails are hugely successful with other customers but it has gotten to the point that I do not even open emails from those companies anymore. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. Don’t be insane, if it doesn’t work, learn from it and switch it up.

3. Get Personal

“The best e-mails feel personal—and they are.”

Customization strikes again! As I mentioned above, it is important to customize the landing page..but if the email is generic then the customer may not even click on it. Customization is a hot topic right now, from manufacturing to e-commerce, and there is a good reason for this.  Customization in the form of targeting shows up everywhere from Amazon suggestions to Google banner ads to Facebook sponsored posts. There is a reason for this, it works. In my opinion, the goal of the marketer is to make it seem like they are speaking directly to the customer…what better way to do this than tailor the content to that specific customer.

The article by McKinsey isn’t groundbreaking, it isn’t revolutionary, but it is direct and effective…kind of like email marketing. So the next time you receive marketing material in your email inbox, open it up and see if it follows the rules above.