It’s all about getting the message in the right hands
In American football, it’s the job of the quarterback to control and win the game. They do this by completing passes. The best quarterbacks in the NFL had a pass completion rate of between 68% (Joe Burrows) and 64.3% (Tom Brady).
In marketing, it’s the job of the marketer to engage with the audience and make sales. One of the most the effective tools to engage with your audience is email. Unfortunately, according to Mailchimp, the average open rate for email business had a pass completion rate of between 21% and 19% (depending on your industry).
Be a Quarterback and complete more passes.
I’d say the main difference between the two is that a quarterback is more targeted. He picks out his target before delivering a pass, and as a result, has a better passes completed.
The email open rate is based around lists. In my experience most lists aren’t that well managed. As a result, the same message is issued to everyone. So it’s not that surprising that the message doesn’t get opened by 80% of the audience.
Work play-by-play to win the game
I mentioned either that the quarterback has an objective – to control and win the game.
The quarterback does this through a series of events called plays, the plays are the strategic options that the quarterback has.
Depending on circumstances on the field, the quarterback will try to select the correct ‘play’ or strategy to move his team further up the field and towards their objective – to win the game.
The marketer shares the objectives of the business they are part of, and that usually means increase sales. The marketing plan gives the marketer a series of strategies they can use to achieve their objective.
Email gives marketers a great tool to directly communicate with their audience based on what they want to say as a business; for example seasonal events, product launches, and important news.
But this approach tends to be ‘list’ driven, rather than targeted or customer focused (something we believe accounts for the 20% average open rate).
As email is data driven in nature, email can also be used for highly targeted personalised messages based on the behaviour of the audience. This allows you the freedom to mixing the scheduled ‘company’ marketing messages with a data driven marketing plan that is active everyday based on the behaviour of our audience.
In our experience at Websand, putting a data driven marketing mix in place that’s driven around the behaviour of your customers, skyrockets your marketing performance and moves you towards your objectives faster (and with less effort).
Becoming an email marketing Quarterback
Quarterbacks need to react to the movement on the field to pick the right pass. Marketing automation allows marketers to become quarterbacks. Putting your marketing plan in play based on the behaviour of the audience.
For example, you know that getting your customers to the 3rd sale increases the likelihood they will be retained as a customer.
So as soon as someone makes their 2nd purchase – whoosh – your marketing strategy leaps into action, sending a stellar personalised relevant irresistible marketing message your target can’t resist!
Pass completion! 1st down on 3rd Purchase 🙂
Remember, a quarterback might throw a game-winning pass, but it’s really all the previous completed passes that put them into that game-winning position. Some clever folks in marketing call that brand building ☺
Up your completion rate through targeted email marketing
The comparison with the Quarterback % completion rate is based on a season average for a Quarterback. However, the measurement of email tends to be campaign by campaign rather than the ‘overall plan’.
In our experience, a move to marketing automation has a x3 higher conversion rate than a ‘list driven’ email. That moves your email marketing open rate average from 20% to a similar average to an NFL Quarterback – and they tend to be worth a lot of money.
If you could up your email marketing performance to ‘Quarterback’ levels, what difference could that make to your marketing, and your business as a whole?
Coaching the Quarterback Email Marketeer
If you want to up your email marketing completion rate, get in touch. We’ve got the software platform, the experience and the expertise.