It’s 2024 – Time to Reset & Optimize

The new year brings an opportunity to reset marketing campaigns and optimize the customer experience. There’s nothing like accidentally outdated campaigns to leave your consumer-recipients dazed and confused! So, it’s the perfect time to review automated eMail workflows and mapped customer journeys to ensure they are aligned with business objectives for the months ahead. Conducting a thorough review of your eMail automation strategy can help maximize engagement and results throughout the year — from updating promotional messaging, to improving journey flows. Whether you need to tweak a few individual emails or overhaul multi-channel journeys from the ground up, these tips will help you start the new year off right by engaging customers in more meaningful and impactful ways.

Updating Automated Email Campaigns

Here are 15 best practices for refreshing your automated email campaigns:

1. Update promotional messaging and offers to reflect new products, pricing, sales, etc.

2. Refine segmentation and targeting with the latest customer data to improve relevance.

3. Review content and make necessary changes to re-engage your subscribers.

4. Check automation workflows and triggers to align with ideal customer journeys.

5. Refresh subject lines, pre-header, and sender details to boost opens and clicks.

6. Review performance and make any necessary optimizations.

7. Ensure compliance with latest anti-spam and privacy regulations.

8. Confirm your delivery-metrics remain strong; remember to review complaints (e.g., spam).

9. Update calls-to-action, landing pages, and links to remove expired endpoints.

10. Adjust send cadence and times based on open/conversion analytics.

11. Personalize more content dynamically to increase relevance.

12. Verify analytics integrations are capturing key optimization data.

13. Record new campaign goals and benchmarks to guide future optimization.

14. Solicit input from other teams to inform adjustments to automated workflows.

15. Brainstorm fresh creative, segments, and promotions to delight subscribers.

Optimizing Consumer Journeys

When reviewing journeys, consider these enhancements:

• Align journeys to new marketing and revenue goals for the year ahead.

• Update customer lifecycle stage-mapping if ideal journeys have evolved.

• Review triggers, actions, and segments for relevance to current customers and their behaviors.

• Identify and optimize high drop-off points in journeys.

• Coordinate journeys across channels (e.g., email, web, mobile, in-store, etc.)

• A/B test new journey variations to determine optimal paths.

• Incorporate more real-time behavioral triggers versus batch sends.

• Evaluate adding interactive content — consider polls and quizzes.

• Determine if chatbots or two-way engagement could improve certain journeys.

• Check loyalty program integrations to optimize when, where, and how to leverage incentives.

• Nurture community, advocacy, and retention, not just sales.

• Fill identified gaps where you could better anticipate customer needs.

• Survey customers for insights on where they need more support.

• Look for redundancies and opportunities to consolidate touch-points.

• Account for all lifecycle stages and possible scenarios.

• Review branding, tone, and messaging for alignment with brand values.

By taking the time to re-evaluate and optimize your automated eMails and cross-channel consumer journeys, you can ensure your campaigns are coordinated, impactful, and delivering value across the entire customer lifecycle. Use these best practices to review your program and develop even more effective engagements throughout the year ahead. 

And remember we’re always available to assist! So, please reach out!