You’ve sent out all your ‘please stay with us’ emails, you’ve cleaned up your list, and the GDPR deadline of the 25th of May has passed. Phew, all done.
But now what?
Effective email marketing starts and ends with your subscribers
This shouldn’t come as a shock. However, if it does, or if it’s unclear what I mean by this statement, let’s have a look at why GDPR came in place. A very, very, short, eye-blink-fast snapshot.
Your clients aren’t interested in your marketing.
Think about it. Who wants to say they bought this product or service ‘because the commercial was so funny’ or ‘They pestered me with emails until I gave in’? No one.
GDPR has forced all companies to clean up their act – if people have not actively opted into your marketing channels, they cannot be marketed to until they do.
So the question remains: now what?
Rethink your email marketing strategy
Did you lose a lot of subscribers “due to GDPR”? Then it might be worth rethinking your strategy – and your answer to that question.
To repeat the statement above, effective email marketing starts and ends with your subscribers. When asked to opt-in to your newsletters, what is your client expecting? And what are you delivering? If these don’t line up you can’t blame them for unsubscribing.
How many times does it take to order a hot fudge brownie and get scrambled eggs on toast before you never go back to that cafe?
Takeaway 1: Line up expectations and offer
Keep data clean
GDPR requires you to have up to date data. As errors do happen, it is important to implement a regular revisit of your email lists. This will not only help you comply with GDPR, down the line this will make your marketing more effective.
Furthermore, this will help with segmenting your subscribers, which will allow you to send them more valuable and relevant emails.
Keeping your data clean and up to date is also very important when it comes to automation. If your automation is linked with your CRM, and emails people on your behalf after they have opted out, you can face a hefty fine.
Takeaway 2: Regular audits of subscriber data
Cater to your subscribers
GDPR requires that you make it easy for your subscribers to opt out of your marketing efforts. Many already do this on every email, with an unsubscribe link to either be taken out of that specific communication, or all communication by your brand.
To make your email campaign as effective as possible, it is necessary to regularly review that dataset of subscribers and your segmentation. What content is performing best? If subscribers open your email but do not engage, could they benefit from being in a different targeting segment?
Avoid people unsubscribing because you are not serving them the content they are interested in. Every campaign should be analysed on a whole, and on its’ contributing elements.
Takeaway 3: Analyse performance beyond vanity metrics
Keep calm and continue email marketing
GDPR has not necessarily made email marketing more difficult. It has limited those we can market too – and we can question ourselves, if they are not interested, why should we waste resources on them?
GDPR does not mean we can’t grow our email lists; if anything, it makes sure we only grow it in ways that will be most effective for our email marketing. The challenge we must accept is to continue offering value to our customers, instead of pushing sales.
Nothing mentioned here is new, and you most probably know all of this. Instead of seeing GDPR as an obstacle, we should view it as the opportunity to return to the core of email marketing – and get it right.
If you are considering a complete overhaul, our Web Developer Charlie has written a good piece on how to build good email newsletters in HTML. If you’re short on hands you can always get in touch with us to see what we can do for you.