Email marketing has a huge power to engage and delight audiences, but often its potential is left untapped because of the way it is used.

We wanted to help our audience understand how to use email marketing to their advantage, and to do so we sat down with Kate Barrett, of E-Focus Marketing, to find out about her email marketing book ‘E-telligence’. 

What inspired you to write E-telligence?

I wrote E-telligence to help marketers better understand the power of email marketing and the different areas of focus to optimise and add to their current strategy.

Understanding your audience is key to creating intelligent, engaging email marketing, so this book starts with a look at your objectives and data, before diving into how you can use this data to personalise, segment and trigger your campaigns to send the right message to the right person at the right time.

Who needs to read this book?

If you’re involved with planning and implementing email marketing campaigns (CMO’s, marketing Directors, Marketing managers, Marketing executives) for your business, this book will give you a step-by-step guide on how to plan, optimise and add to your email marketing strategy.

What is the importance of email marketing for business in 2022/3?

Email marketing underpins both your customer acquisition and retention marketing strategies.

It is the perfect support to further nurture potential prospects brought in by your external acquisition activities such as social media, SEO or print, and a targeted, direct way to encourage current customers to come back and purchase again with engaging, inspiring, helpful content and offers.

We saw in covid the importance of being able to have that direct contact with prospects and customers that just isn’t available through other channels – but ongoing success here involves really understanding your customers and how you can provide them with the right message to the right person at the right time.

What are the most important things a company should consider when they are starting their email marketing journey?

When getting started with email marketing, ensure that you put the customer at the heart of everything you do. For example…

  • At the point of sign up on your website make sure you clearly show the benefits of subscribing to (and reading) your emails
  • Consider your business-critical data – what is the one thing you could know about your audience to allow you to start providing relevant content to them from the start; for example, are they interested in Men’s/Women’s/Kids’ clothing?
  • As you grow your email list, use this and other data (such as what they’ve opened/clicked on previously) to send relevant content and offers, as well as start to trigger emails to send automatically around the customer journey.
  • Stay consistent with your sends to keep your brand top of mind with interesting, relevant content.

What have been the biggest changes in email marketing in the past few years?

The biggest change in email marketing in the last few years is a greater understanding of the importance of understanding and using your data to better connect, engage and excite your audience.

As consumer behaviour online changes, the need for more personalised, relevant content is key to keeping subscriber attention and making your brand stand out in the inbox.

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

My main aim for E-telligence was to give marketers a better understanding of the ins and outs of email marketing and how they can start looking at their objectives, data, strategy and tactics in a more intelligent way.

I’d love for marketers to take away the wealth of ideas in the book and adapt the techniques to offer what their audience needs and wants and better engage them, increasing their results.

Finally, what is your favourite thing about the book?

My favourite part of the book is the step-by-step nature, real life case study examples and tasks at each stage to help you implement your new knowledge into your business straight away!

If you’d like to pick up your own copy today, you can find it here or head over to Footprint Digital’s Linkedin between 5-9th December 2022 to enter a competition to WIN a copy of Kate’s book, alongside 4 of our other favourite books.