Note: This is old content from GarrettMickley.com. I am no longer pursuing a digital marketing career, but I didn’t want the content to go to waste...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Amazing post,
I always thought email marketing was dead, but no more.
A couple questions if I may,
I always find getting emails from companys when I have signed up to their service to be a real pain. How do you avoid this, Does talking in a laidback tone using internet slang or popular internet culture references help (when the market is for younger target audiences or tech enthusiasts). Or should you always remain formal?
More generaly, When working in a market inwhich you don't know what the user is interested in (for more generic,open markets which entice different types of people) how do would you suggest making the post so it interests or at least doesn't bug the user? Is there a way to make custum messages for different audiences or is their no automated way to do so without making your own tech solution based on their internet habbits (on your site) and would doing so violate any laws or be to invasive of their privacy?
Thanks again and a great read!
May I suggest you split these long posts into seperate parts (e.g seperate posts) as that may accumilate more traffic and is easier on the eyes for the reader as well as generally more consumable content. But hey, you're the master!
Great questions!
I generally use a personal-style brand voice. For any of my companies, the emails are always coming from me, Garrett. I sign everything, and if you hit reply, the email comes back to my inbox so that I can see it and respond. I'm extremely personal about it and I keep formalities out of it as much as possible.
Read more about that here:
Okay gotta stop you right there. If you don't know what your market is interested in, you need to do more market research and set up customer personas. And you need to do this first before any other thing in marketing, because all your marketing will come back to customer personas.
Read more about that here:
You can automate this in ConvertKit. Here's their features page showing how.
In ConvertKit, they have to start the process by signing up on your form, and then there's a double opt-in email that they receive to confirm they want to start the process, so it does not violate any laws nor their privacy w/out their consent.
Thanks for the indepth answers and great tip, I'll definitly adoptusing a more personel voice for it in the future.
Just want to expand on my last point which may have been slightly misunderstood on either my end or yours.
I'm more focusing on markets inwhich everyone old or young needs, e.g paper or supermarkets. But I suppose for the later certain age ranges certaily prefer certain shops (e.g Waitrose -> The older generation).
But in general for these markets how do you discern between them as you only get a limited amount of information about them unless you asked for their age bracket on signing up which would push many potential customers and subscribers away or should you play it safe and just send out very general not user custamized and/or oriented messages.
If I'm incorrect in any of the above, please do correct me.
Looking forward to your reply.
Many thanks,
Theo.
I think I could better answer your question if you explain to me exactly what you're trying to do. Are you starting a super market?
🤣, No I'm just interested as to how it'd differ for a market in whch there is no bias to a certain age range or type of person and those where some just some examples of the top f my head, sorry for the confusion!
Got it. So, for the super market example, there's a few things going on:
Unpacking 1. The product brands mostly market themselves.
A brand product such as Oreo is going to market themselves, and people just know to go to their local supermarket to get it, right? Oreo's customer avatars may be:
They might even break those down even more since kids at age 6 are into different things than kids at age 12.
They'll create individual content targeting each of those customer avatars.
Unpacking 2. The super markets market themselves as being better than the other super markets
I've never worked for a supermarket so I'm not sure how they handle customer avatars, but for the most part I would assume they focus on adults. They could break those into various customer avatars such as:
Again, creating unique content for each avatar.
For example, to advertise to single parents they might say "Our supermarket has the best child seats in carts to keep them safe and sound while you're shopping."
To advertise to a single businessman they might say "All of our cashiers are always on hand to get you in-and-out on your lunch breaks."
These would be two different commercials, or ads, or whatever. Each targeting a different one of their customer avatars.
Unpacking 3. You can have more than one "customer avatar"
By now I hope I have explained well enough that you can have more than one customer avatar and all you need to do is create content dedicated to each avatar. Don't try to make generic content to hit everyone. Separate all of your customers into their own types (the customer avatar) and then when you're creating content, focus on one type per piece of content.
Thank you for taking the time to break this down for me, I was still referring more to the online and email area but I can use what I learnt here and transfer it to apply for that pretty easily! Thx!
Create tags for each customer avatar. Use the tagging automation mentioned in the guide and then write your emails based on the customer avatars and send only based on the tag.
Great, Many thanks!
You caught on to some brilliant points. One of my favorite newsletters to get is Joe Eames from thinkster.io. He makes a habit of sending out e-mails every now and then where pure technical content is not the main focus at all; the e-mail is a chance to check in with readers and see if anyone is struggling and invite them to chat with him about it if they need to.
I recently had a couple days of my life that were crappy enough that a total stranger on the Internet asked if I was struggling with anything and without a second thought I had hit reply and was getting my job search frustrations off my chest, as I was struggling to find the job I really wanted and my bank was not-so-subtly telling me that I needed a job if I wanted a roof over my head next month.
Joe and I went back and forth a little bit and he gave me a three month subscription to the site for free. Not gonna lie, I cried. When you feel invisible to the world, it feels so rejuvenating to know that someone else was thinking of you and thought you were worthy of kindness. I got an opportunity to see his true character and I'm going to be sure to mention my experience vrry positively should anyone ask me about my experience with the site or him in the future.
That’s amazing! I fully believe that putting people first like that is the real key to success. It’s why I’m putting all my old marketing content (like this) here before deleting it from my website, which is turning over to my new business.
PS I’m sorry things are tough for you right now. You’ll make it through!