Happy New Year!

I’m looking forward to 2021 being the year we all get our freedom back.

Almost everyone in the world has been affected to a greater or lesser extent by some sort of restriction to movement or social contact thanks to Covid.

From a personal point of view, I’ve been affected the most by having my freedom to travel taken away from me. As I write this post, my part of the UK is under “Tier 4” restrictions which means I have to stay at home at all times, unless I have one of a very small list of “reasonable excuses”. I’m not allowed to even travel to the seaside, never mind travel abroad. And I very much miss being able to travel to the US to meet up with my business friends over there.

It’s taken this level of restriction for me to realise just how important freedom is to me, and it’s something that I intend to take full advantage of once we’re allowed to freely travel round the world again without the risk of spreading a deadly virus.

My New Year Intention

Last year, I was totally not consistent enough with my email sending. I always intended to send value-add content out on a regular basis, but often didn’t send anything for weeks on end.

This year, I’m choosing to say “Enough”, and start to set a better example.

It’s more important than ever for anyone with an email list to keep in regular contact with their audience, sending out value-add content regularly – ideally at least once a week. When possible, I’m also going to send out a short video each week as well.

Best Practice Recommendations

I’m going to share what I think is the minimum you should be doing to keep in touch with your audience.

In an ideal world, this should apply to the majority of people sending email and the majority of audiences. And if you can keep in touch more often, that’s even better.

I’m also realistic enough to realise that there isn’t ever a “One Size Fits All” approach though, and if you Know Your Audience well enough, you can of course still modify these recommendations.

Here are my suggestions:

1. Send at least one value-add content email every single week, to all your most engaged contacts (I’d suggest all contacts that have engaged in the last 30 days).
2. Make sure your less engaged contacts still get one email every month (I’d suggest all contacts that have engaged between 30 and 90 days ago).
3. Automatically send a “re-engagement” sequence to your contacts that reach a “maximum engagement threshold”. (I’d suggest this threshold is 90 days).

If your email marketing platform doesn’t make it easy to automatically segment and manage your list as described as above, you can use Deliverability Defender to help automate the process of engagement management. 

Did You Already Download My Checklist?

Finally, if you’ve not already downloaded your copy, make sure you check out The RACE Method Checklist, my simple guide that shows you the most important steps you should take to Avoid the Spam Folder and Double Your Open Rates.