Mastering Email Marketing for Design Professionals: Personalization, Automation, and Analytics Unveiled

Ever wondered how to revolutionize your email marketing strategy to maximize engagement and open rates? Tune in to the latest episode of Designer Discussions, where Jason, Miriam, and Maria reveal insider tips on leveraging email automation uniquely tailored for design professionals. Jason refreshes insights from his NKBA presentation, emphasizing the critical role of personalization in email campaigns. Discover how to create effective workflows, segment your audience, and utilize AI to draft welcome messages that resonate with different demographics while maintaining your brand's unique voice.

Join us as we explore the importance of regular follow-up workflows, how to gather and utilize audience feedback, and the benefits of investing in the paid versions of top email service providers like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and AWeber. Jason shares practical advice on understanding your email analytics to tailor your content better and improve engagement. This episode is packed with actionable strategies to help you enhance your email marketing efforts, build stronger connections with your audience, and ultimately drive your business forward.

If you would like to get the links and show notes for this episode, click on the link below:

• https://www.designerdiscussions.com/episodes/episode-120-Email-Marketing-Tips

Previous Episodes Referenced:

• https://www.designerdiscussions.com/episodes/episode-19-email-marketing-tips-for-interior-designers

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Designer Discussions is a partnership of three experts: Jason Lockhart, CEO of KABMS; Maria Martin, founder of DesignAppy; and Mirjam Lippuner, founder of Get Ink DIY

Episode Transcript

Mirjam Lippuner (00:00):
Welcome to Designer Discussions with Jason,
Maria and Mirjam.
Today, Jason is going to talkto us about the latest email
marketing tips.

Maria Martin (00:12):
Welcome to the Designer Discussions podcast
with Jason, Mirjam and Maria,where we talk about marketing,
pr and business advice fordesign professionals marketing,
pr and business advice fordesign professionals.

Jason Lockhart (00:32):
If you all look back at episode 19, I had talked
a lot about email marketing andthat was an NKBA presentation I
did and it went over a lot ofopen rates and how to do good
email titles and all that.
But what I'm going to talktoday is about bringing a lot of
that information up to date andall that.
But what I'm going to talktoday is about bringing a lot of
that information up to date.
So really, what's huge rightnow is email automation and I'm
going to talk a little bit aboutthat, which is a good thing.
But you want to be mindful ofwhen you automate a lot of this,

(00:57):
you want to also personalize itas well, because the key to
good open rates is reallyconnecting with your audience,
and so by if you automateeverything, it's going to be
generic in nature and you won'thave as good of email open rates
as you can.
But a lot of the top emailservice providers like MailChimp

(01:22):
service providers likeMailChimp, austin Contact,
aweber, a lot of those out therethey now have email automation
where you can do like thewelcome emails.
If you are going to use emailautomation, it's a first set up
a workflow on how you want thisall to happen so it can help
save you time in the long run.
So if you have a welcome email,what you want to do, like I

(01:46):
said, personalize it, and one ofthe things I had talked about
in episode 19 is to segment youraudience.
After you've done email for awhile, you may want to have a
few welcome emails for specifictypes of audiences.
So you may want to have one forif you're a designer or
remodeler.

(02:06):
You may want to have one foryour prospects.
You may want to have adifferent welcome email.
If you're sending email out toany of the vendors that you work
with, any of the clients you'vehad in the past, you want to
segment your list.
That is vital if you're goingto use email automation, because
that helps you to personalizeit just a little more than just

(02:30):
having the generic email outthere.
Work on the workflow first.
So, with any of the tools youhave out there they have if you
have a welcome email that youwant to send out to your clients
, use AI to create that welcomemessage, but then add your own

(02:52):
flavor, your own brand voice,into that.
Don't just use exactly what AIgives you If you're talking to
millennials, or if you'retalking to baby boomers, or if
you're talking to baby boomersor if you're talking to the
luxury market, whoever that isfor you, whoever that audience
is for you, make sure that yourcontent is speaking to that

(03:14):
audience.
So when you use the AIautomation and they hand you the
welcome message, you can tailorit to your audience.
So once you have that welcomeemail workflow, now you want to
do follow up workflows.
One way to help you with openrates is to send out emails

(03:37):
every so often that ask youraudience are they getting the
type of information that theywant to receive?
Are they getting the type ofinformation that they want to
receive?
Individuals are your audiencethat may not have responded in
the past.
They may actually respond nowto let you know.
Yes, I was reading it at first,but now I'm not, and this is
why, and so that X, y, z canhelp you create another workflow

(04:00):
just for that specific audienceto help get the email open
rates up, or that can let youknow.
You may need to change certainaspects of how you're writing
your email as well, but you canalso look at who's not opening
your email and if you see atrend over time that you see the
same people are not opening upyour email.

(04:21):
This is why I had alsomentioned whatever email service
provider you have, you need toget the paid version, not just
the free version, because in thepaid version you'll see all of
the analytics who's opening them, who's opening your email when
they're opening them, who'sopening your email when they're
opening, and all and most of theemail service providers.
They start at about $15, $20 amonth and that will all depend

(04:45):
on how big your audience is.
But we're not talking about alot of money that you have to
spend monthly.
But you need to have the paid,not the free, because when I
talk about segmenting youraudience, on the free version
you will not be able to segmentbecause you can only send out

(05:05):
one email to one audience andthat's it On the page.
You can segment the audienceand you can also look at the
stats and the analytics, whichyou really need to understand
who's opening your email and not.
And if you're going to useemail marketing as one of your
marketing avenues, you need tohave the analytics because
that's going to tell you what'sworking and what's not.
As you're looking at theanalytics to see who's opening

(05:27):
the email when they're opening.
If you see a trend of the sameindividuals or the same people
in your audience are not openingemails, are not opening emails,
you may want to delete themfrom your email list because
obviously they were added oneither by you or they added
themselves and they wereinterested at first but they're
not interested now.
If you see over time six months, eight months that they're not

(05:50):
opening and it's the sameindividuals not opening your
email, just delete them.
They may not be interestedanymore.
So just take them off your listand that will also help out
with the open rates, because nowyou're sending it to only the
people that are interested.
Now you don't have tocompletely purge the list.
If you see trends ofindividuals that are not opening

(06:12):
, those are the ones you want totake off.
But if you saw somebody open onelast month but they haven't
opened it in a few months, thatmay be a trigger for you to see
what did I write in that emailor what was in that email that
may have triggered certainpeople to open it over others.
That's where also looking atthe analytics helps, because

(06:33):
you're going to see you shouldsee a trend of open rates that
are almost around the same.
So if you have an open ratelast month of about 15 percent
and then the month before thatwas 18 percent and then the
month before that was 16 percent, if you have a month where it
was a drastic change, you weregetting 18, 15, 20.

(06:56):
And then all of a sudden yousaw an open rate of like 60% and
that was an anomaly.
You didn't see it any otherplace.
You need to really investigatewhat happened in that specific
email to see what did you talkabout, what did you address and
who in your audience opened thatemail.
So that could tell you.
Okay, well, I may need tosegment my list just for these

(07:18):
specific people, for this topic,for what I wrote about to send
out.
That's some information thatyou're going to really need to
investigate.
It does not take a lot of time.
Email automation is verypopular because it saves you
time, but if you want to besuccessful at email marketing,
you need to spend a little time.

(07:38):
I would say about an hour to amonth, that's it.
You only need to spend an hourto a month because if you're
sending out email newsletters,say, once a month, even if you
just spend an hour a month rightbefore you send off the next
newsletter.
Look at what happened in thepast, what resonated with your
audience in the past, just tosee what you can do now and then

(08:02):
over time.
Once you've done that for abouta month or two no more than
about three months now you canstart to automate that process.
Now you can use the emailautomation to help you with the
framework of the type of emailsyou want to send, so you could
create a template and if, forinstance, in your emails,

(08:23):
recipes are really hitting youraudience, the right way, you may
want to automate to say, forthe AI to have it for each of
the months, have a differentrecipe lined up.
Have a different recipe linedup.
So for September, you mayalready have the AI look at

(08:44):
recipe around that month, whereit could be Labor Day in
November, recipe around theThanksgiving holiday.
So you're lining up automationsthat help you with the topics
that resonate with your audience, which I'll say, for instance,
recipes.
But whatever that may be, foryou it may be a project, so you
may want to have a frameworkaround AI and generating project

(09:06):
description.
Now you already have theframework written out.
Now you got to head in there,just edit it just a little bit
to add your own flavor, your ownbrand voice, and now you've
actually personalized it andit's helped save you time
because the AI did the hard workof doing the research and the
framework.
You've come in behind it to addin your brand voice,

(09:28):
personalize for your audienceand then sending it out.
That's what I really want totalk about today was email
automation, because that's hugeright now.
Reference, episode 19,.
Because I talked a lot aboutemail open rates.
I talked a lot about what yourtitle or email header should be.
I talked a lot about a lot ofthis information that will help

(09:50):
get you started.
So now, following up on emailautomation, which is huge right
now to help save you time, andhow you need to segment the list
to get your open rates rightand to get action from the
emails that you send out.
Okay, so if you have anyquestions on any of that, reach
out to us.
We'll be happy to answer themand we hope to hear from you in

(10:10):
two weeks on Design Discussions.

Maria Martin (10:12):
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(10:58):
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