The best thing we have going for email marketing is the immense amount of data we can obtain which makes it easier (I nearly said easy) to test any changes in our campaigns. It is the reason that so many companies are using email marketing, and, ironically, why we should consider trying something counter to what our data indicates.

All your competitors will be doing exactly the same as you normally do; changing details in their emails, such as headlines and subject lines, to see if there’s that elusive 0.2% which will make all that effort worthwhile. Until, that is, others catch up. It’s the story of our lives.

Most of us must have been on a management course where, flip charts to the fore, the facilitators ask us to come up with off-the-wall-ideas, solutions to problems that would, patently, never work. The rest of the exercise would be used to show that one, sometimes more, of the ideas had legs. We’d come away impressed but how many of us would actually put what we had learned into our next email marketing campaign? Did you feel sorry for the facilitators? 

Feel sorry for yourself if you don’t practice it. You are missing out. While all your competitors are striving to gain that extra 0.02%, there might be a substantial advantage to be gained. All it takes is bravery.

Use your colleagues. Tell them to come up with ideas that no one else has thought of. They might well be reluctant at first as, the same with everyone in email marketing, they’ll be wondering about the metrics, asking themselves if they can back it up. You’ll need to build the trust of your colleagues. It’s likely one might have an idea they were a bit frightened of putting forward. You know, because it wasn’t based on metrics.

If someone says, “That’ll never work,” demand they prove it. Don’t take “It’s obvious,” for an answer. It’s a cop-out. Remember, a test with a segmented email marketing list will show if it has any legs. In that case, the data will not lie. Give off-the-wall ridiculous a go. You know you want to.