You may be familiar with email marketing, or “email blasting,” as it is commonly known. Many marketers, including myself, have been using email blasts to send out notifications, promote events, and sell products for years. However, this type of email marketing is often ineffective because it is sent to all subscribers, regardless of whether or not they have an interest in the topic. That is why, as an email marketer, you should always be looking for ways to improve your results and minimize the amount of “junk” email that you receive.
One method of achieving this is using conditional rules. With these rules, you can take into consideration various factors, such as the content of an email, the number of emails returned, etc., to determine whether or not you should email a person, or whether you should put them on a “blacklist” and avoid sending them any further notifications. Using conditional rules to manage your email marketing can help you stay focused on what is important and minimize the amount of “spam” that you send out.
What Are Conditional Rules?
The concept of conditional rules originates from AWeber, an email marketing tool that I use and recommend. AWeber gives you the ability to create rules that determine when you should send out emails and which emails should go out. These rules are commonly known as “conditional rules,” and they greatly improve your odds of having a good response rate and less spam. So what exactly are conditional rules?
Similar to the way that you use if/then statements in your everyday life, conditional rules in email marketing allow you to determine what will happen next based on one or more conditions. Commonly, you will use these rules to determine whether or not you should email someone. Conditions can include anything that you can think of, such as the email’s content, whether or not a product was purchased, etc. For example, you can use the product purchase to determine whether or not you should email a person about a special sale or promo code.
Why Should You Try Out Conditional Rules?
As I mentioned above, one of the major issues with regular, indiscriminate email blasts is that they often result in tons of spam. Using conditional rules, you can greatly reduce the chances of accidentally hitting “send” when you actually meant to send an email to someone. This type of “error” or sending an email to the wrong person can result in you getting blacklisted by email providers and losing your ability to send future emails. Using conditionals, you can determine with a high degree of certainty whether or not you should send an email to a particular person, or whether you should put them on a “blacklist” and avoid sending them any further emails.
Another great thing about conditional rules is that they allow you to send the right people the right emails at the right time. This can be extremely effective when used correctly. For instance, if you notice that a certain type of email recipient is always unhappy with your service, you can create a rule to automatically ignore them. In this way, you are not wasting your time sending out these emails and you are assured of getting the desired results. You can also use conditional rules to segment your lists based on interests, hobbies, etc., and send the right people the right emails, at the right time, based on their profiles.
How Do You Create Conditional Rules?
In order to use conditional rules, you will first need to create them. You can do this either through the AWeber dashboard, or through the email marketing tool. As I mentioned above, commonly you will use these rules to determine whether or not you should email someone. So, in order to do this, you must enter the email address of the person whose inbox you want to monitor. Then, you will need to setup the conditions that you want to use to determine whether or not you should email the person. Once you have setup the rules, you will then be able to monitor the results and determine whether or not they worked as you expected them to. Usually, you will need to follow up with a small test email to make sure that the person actually received it.
Testing Out The Concept
Now that you have an idea of what conditional rules are and why you should try them out, it’s time to test the waters. The best way to find out whether or not these rules work is to actually try them out and see how they perform. So, before you make any major changes to your current strategy, you should always test out a new rule in a small scale first, just to make sure that everything is going well. Then, you can gradually increase the number of people and products that you are checking, or “trigging”, against.
To try out conditional rules, simply create a new email campaign, and within that email campaign, create a new rule. In the “subject line” of your rule, you will need to input the name of the person or business that you are sending the email to. Then, in the “body” of your email, you will need to input the text that you want to use to notify the person. When you hit “send,” you will see a notification that the email was sent successfully. If you want to test out a new rule with an existing email list, you can always merge the two lists together. This way, you will be keeping track of all the email addresses that you have collected over the years, while being able to test out new rules, product offers, etc. Without a doubt, conditional rules are a great way to improve your email marketing results and minimize the amount of spam that you send out.