I’m fixing an embarrassing hole in my own digital strategy. My email newsletter is so haphazard, so ill-thought out, I need to make some hefty changes.
I needed to schedule time to make this happen and I have done. Today.
I’d followed the easy route that we can so easily fall into. The route that email marketing automation allows you to follow. The cut and paste syndrome. Widgets and screen overlays that gently nudge readers to subscribe to updates. The free service from Mailchimp that enables you (as the list owner) to control how often your updates are sent and reports on open and click rates.
A brilliant service. Such a simply brilliant service.
THE PROBLEM
What’s letting me down is my content. It was all one-way. It’s nothing more than a regurgitation of what’s presented on this website. The article you’re reading write now (if you’re a subscriber) will arrive with you tomorrow morning with a simple ‘Hey… here’s what’s happening…’ intro.
It’s horribly ordinary. A complete contradiction to what I stand for.
THE FIX
I asked ‘what do I need to automate?’
The truth is, it’s the delivery mechanism and nothing more. The subscribing and unsubscribing and dispatch of email. I’m not looking for anything more complex.
It’s the truth for so much of what we do (or can do) online.
From the homepage to the order success page. We can easily become governed by the templates we purchase. Because it’s so so easy to do. You just click buttons and things are added.
For those of us who pre-date WordPress and got our coding hands dirty with Frontpage and Dreamweaver, the template world offers us access to the time we lost in the digital yesteryear.
I am reworking my email newsletter. I have to (I’ve just announced it right here). I will be creating fresh content and linking to a mixture of my own musings and those from writers that have inspired me during the week. My intention is to build a newsletter strategy that I can be proud of. Not just to tick a box.
I’m not particularly proud to have just passed the 1000 subscriber mark. I’ve been in this business for 19 years. I should have a far greater reach through email. The problem? It’s always sat secondary to other more prominent tasks. I’m changing that right now. (Care to join me?)
The issue we face in the templated digital world is knowing what we can automate and what we should automate.
You can’t automate conversations. That’s essentially what I was trying to do myself through email. I did it badly.
Yes, you can pull content feeds and personalise your email (if you have the right data) and add all the neat cosmetic enhancements to make your email look professional. But it doesn’t add anything to the conversation if you haven’t added anything to the conversation. Does that make sense?
It’s easy to get excited with the magnitude of tasks that we can now automate online. Ways to save you time. It’s the process and the mechanisms that require automation, not the strategy. Think ‘what conversations should I automate?’ rather than which of those you can.
Consider what it is you can’t do. Then find a solution.
Don’t allow the solution to define your process and pre-empt your thinking.
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