How to improve your email marketing automation using video games

You’ve read dozens of blogs about marketing. And you already know that email marketing will be the key to your success.

But it’s a daunting task. There are so many different systems available. And there’s so much you need to learn.

So you stick to what you know. That might be content marketing, through writing blogs like this one. Or it might be social media marketing and cultivating a following.

And while they’re both helpful to your marketing strategy, they’re not fixing the issue with your email automation.

What you need to focus on is mastery.

According to Daniel Pink, a master of his craft and author of Drive and To Sell is Human (books you need to read), the key to mastery is feedback.

If you don’t know what’s working, you don’t know what you need to do more, or less, of.

So what you need is constant feedback.

Not sure how that might work? Then think of it like this.

Gaming is a great way to learn through feedback.

Let’s use Lego Star Wars as an example, even if you’ve never played it (and you should).

So you unpack the game, plug in your controller, and set off.

But you’re rubbish at first. You’re not sure what’s going on. Are you supposed to break the furniture on the Death Star? And how do you stop those droids shooting you? What does that jumbled pile of Lego bricks do?

You press a few buttons, bounce around the level, and suddenly hit ‘game over’. Maybe you fell into lava. Or you ran off a ledge. Maybe you switched to C3-PO and had no weapons to defend yourself.

But you don’t have to figure out what you did. Because the game gives you instant feedback. You know what you’ve done wrong.

You restart the level. This time you stick to Qui-Gonn Jinn and dismantle the droids. You don’t fall off any ledges. And you move on to the next level.

The cycle begins again.

It’s the same for any video game. Losing on a level forces you to adjust your behaviour to get better. The better you get, the more you play. And the more you play, the more you get out of it.

In the case of Lego Star Wars, doing well earns you special kit and bonuses. You can unlock extra content later in the game. You can even go back and redo a level to snag the boosts you missed the first time around.

Marketing automation is no different.

It’s true that people are scared of it.

After all, it often doesn’t come with a manual. And you certainly didn’t learn it at school alongside Pythagoras and the Tudors.

But you don’t need to be afraid of it. Because it gives you instant feedback in the form of data, and what’s even better it’s your data.

Think of email marketing automation as a series of recipes.

Once you’ve made them a few times, you know how to tweak them. Maybe this campaign needs a little more sugar. Or that sequence needs longer in the oven. And that automated retention campaign you’ve set up could do with a dash of pepper.

It’s only by trying them out that you learn what works for you.

But because they give you instant feedback, you can get on the road to mastery much faster.

Email marketing automation is a totally different way to use email. It’s not just about sending pretty newsletters. It’s about systems. And that makes it scary because you’re not in control.

 

But you are in control.

You’re in control of your very own marketing channel. And that makes it a great place for testing.

It’s easy to create small segments in your list. Send out relevant messages, and see the outcomes instantaneously. Your dashboard gives you instant feedback. You can immediately see what’s working and what’s not.

Google Analytics can’t give you that kind of instant feedback on a blog post. And social media is even trickier to measure.

Sure, 18,000 people saw that Facebook post, but how many people bought anything?

You don’t have that problem with email marketing automation.

The more tests you run, the better you’ll get.

Think of each test as a game, your new level in Lego Star Wars, or your own Mario.

How many bonuses will you find this time?

And which knowledge will that unlock for your next campaign?

With mastery, you’ll be able to understand the responses. Have your sales gone up as a result of that new sequence? What was the impact of that on your business?

Email marketing automation is pretty powerful stuff.

And it also means you can devote more time to other aspects of your business. You can set up a trigger to send out a pre-fixed email 42 days after someone buys one of your products or services.

Why 42 days?

Not because 42 is the meaning of life . But because you did plenty of testing, and you got the most repeat sales from messages sent after that amount of time.

After all, 81% of online shoppers are more likely to go on to buy something else because they received an email based on their previous shopping habits.

So with email marketing automation, you don’t need to manually send emails after a given period. Your customer can buy a product, and 42 days later they automatically get your follow up email. And then they buy another product.

All because you tested email triggers.

With testing, you’ll end up with more triggers in place that are actually linked to the behaviour of your customers. And they won’t be random triggers because you’re following a tried-and-tested recipe that links into your wider marketing strategy.

In essence, you’ve gone past Easy mode.

You’ve moved on to Intermediate.

And you’re not far from Expert.

 

Remember, mastery is just a few attempts away.

Your strategy ultimately links to a plan. And that plan is the future of your business.

We don’t know your problems or what you’re trying to solve. But we know that a little bit of testing can help you solve those problems.

You can do this! And if you still feel a bit nervous, sign up for our Websand beta. We’ve got your back, we promise.

This post was brought to you by LJ Sedgwick, black coffee, and the letter X.