The 3 Questions I Ask Before Fixing Your Email Marketing Strategy

What is your email data actually telling you? It's probably not "write better subject lines."

A recent client consultation turned into a masterclass on what really kills email open rates. One company watched their performance crash from 30% to 15%...and the answer wasn't hiding in the copywriting. 

In this episode, I'm taking you behind the scenes of a real email diagnosis and showing you the three strategic questions that separate a real marketing solution from a surface-level band-aid. 

What You'll Learn:

• The mistake most copywriters make when email performance tanks (and why it costs you weeks of wasted effort)
• The one operational change that tanked a client's open rates (and how to check if this is happening to you right now)
• Why sender reputation matters more than subject line testing…and the data that proves it
• How to work with a copywriter or marketer who asks questions first instead of jumping straight to solutions
• The exact data points you need to look at before changing a single word of copy
• How one small email sequence bridged a recognition gap and restored email performance
• Why most email advice fails you, and what strategic email marketing actually looks like

➡️ SHOW NOTES: Grab all the links and resources mentioned in this episode on the blog here! https://www.megankachigan.com/3-questions-email-marketing-strategy

FREE RESOURCE: Copy not converting? Increase your conversion rate in 5-minutes a day when you join my free 5-day challenge “Why Isn’t This Converting?”

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Transcript

"My biggest issue right now is my open rates dropped from 30% to 15%." That is how a recent client consultation started, and today I want to take you behind the scenes of how we took that hard data and found a clear diagnosis and resolved the issue in a 30-minute consultation. My first instinct here was not what most people do, which is to pull up subject line templates or brainstorm new hooks, which is what traditional advice tells us to do. Instead, it was to ask questions, because here's what most people don't realize about email marketing. When your open rates tank, most copywriters panic and start testing because your gut tells you to fix the copy. Get better subject lines, punchier hooks, more urgency, try different send times. But most of the time, that's not actually the problem. The real issue is deeper, and it requires a diagnosis before a prescription. When I work with clients on email marketing strategy, I start by understanding what is actually happening, and I have three diagnostic questions which separate a real marketing strategy from a surface-level band-aid. And the good news is that once you ask the right questions, the solution becomes so obvious, and you're not wasting your time trying to do all the things that aren't actually relevant. So let's get into the three questions. The first one is, is the scope of this broad or isolated? And here's what I mean by that. When my client told me that their open rates dropped, my first instinct was, well, are all their campaigns affected, or is it just one type? And this matters because it tells you whether you're dealing with a specific problem or a systemic one. So we logged into the email service provider and started pulling data. They had a one-month reactivation campaign that tanked from 52% to 21%, and then a different three-month email sequence was at 66%, but now it's at 13%. Every single campaign had tanked. So this told me that it was not a copywriting problem. This wasn't about messaging quality or even audience relevance. Something fundamental had changed. If only one email had dropped, or only one email type had dropped in their open rates, we would investigate that specific campaign. Maybe the audience wasn't connecting, maybe the offer had shifted, maybe the messaging fell off, but when everything drops at once, that to me signals that it is something operational. And here's why this matters for your email marketing strategy. If you're watching your open rates decline, check whether it's happening across all of your campaigns or just one. This single data point tells you whether to investigate your messaging or your sending infrastructure. It saves you so much time from second guessing. Okay, once we know that, then we can move on to question two. Did something change operationally in your email marketing? So once we knew the problem was systemic, that the next question becomes, what is different now than that wasn't different six months ago? Email performance does not decline for just no reason at all, right? Like when all of your campaigns drop, something changed, and we needed to find out what. So we dug into the timeline. It turns out the business had recently rebranded, and that included a name change of their business as well. So with that rebrand came a critical shift in their operation that most business owners are not even thinking about. You're excited about your beautiful new rebrand, the new positioning, the new messaging, but you're not thinking about how your email sender changes. So emails started coming from a different name, and so their subscribers who had five plus years of brand recognition with the original name were all of the sudden confused when emails started coming from their new name after the rebrand. Their brains registered it as an unknown sender, even though the content, the frequency, and the quality were all the same. That part did not change. So this is where email marketing strategy separates just from email marketing copywriting. Most copywriters would say, let's test new subject lines, let's refresh the copy, but none of that actually matters if the person that is opening their inbox doesn't recognize who is sending the email, and this is one of the biggest myths I think we hear about email copywriting is we think open rates are directly connected to the subject lines, and sometimes they can be, but honestly I think they have a smaller effect than what most people give them credit for. Your sender reputation matters so much more, and that was totally displayed in what we are seeing here with this client that I'm working with. Other things that work particularly in this situation but I've seen with other clients that I want you to look out for and be aware of, other operational changes that can tank your email performance can be domain migration or sender name change, a list merge or import, platform migration, so if you're switching from flow desk to kit or vice versa or somewhere else, that is going to affect your email open rates. As we saw, a rebrand or a business name change will affect your open rates, deliverability settings adjustments, an ESP change, so if you have noticed a sudden drop in your email marketing performance, ask yourself, did something change in how I am sending these? Because that answer is often worth more than rewriting all of the copy or blaming your copywriter. Granted, in my opinion, I think the copywriter should know. I think copywriters need to be, especially in this day and age, aware of the marketing that's happening beyond just the copywriting, because copywriting really generally only affects 20% of the outcome, and we need to be aware of what is affecting that 80% as we write the copy as well. So, okay, so we talked about question one is the scope. Is it all the campaigns or just one? And then did something change operationally? And then after that, I would say, well, what does the data actually show? Because identifying the problem isn't enough. We had to verify it with hard data, so we looked at the full picture. Their delivery rate was fantastic, so we knew emails were arriving. Unsubscribe rate, normal. People were not upset. They were not opting out. Their unsubscribe rate was actually pretty low, but it was just their open rate that tanked. People were not opening the emails anymore. So what this told us is that emails were getting into the inboxes, but people were not recognizing the sender well enough to actually open them. Again, no matter how good the subject lines were, they were used to hearing from and getting their information from this particular business, and when it wasn't coming from that same name anymore, they didn't open it. So it was a recognition issue, and this is where most email marketing advice fails you. If you only look at open rates in isolation, you'll probably misdiagnose the problem, but when you look at the full data picture, then the story becomes clear. So each diagnosis, whether it's a recognition problem, like they don't know who you are, maybe it's a deliverability problem, your emails are not reaching their inboxes, or maybe it's a relevance or copy problem, like your audience doesn't care about your message, or it's not just deeply resonating with them enough for them to take action. So those are different diagnoses that point to a completely different solution, and if you get the diagnosis wrong, you'll waste time and energy fixing the wrong thing. So we have to get this right first, and this takes a strategic lens and zooming out and looking at the data first before you dive into the copywriting, and so for me as a copywriter, this is where I am so much more than a copywriter because I'm not just putting the words on the page, I am strategically looking at the bigger picture for you and helping you interpret what does your data mean, actually getting into the weeds of your ESP and saying this is what the data is telling us, here's how I'm interpreting that, and here's what we should do as a result, so that it is not all on you to create a plan to figure out your email marketing as you're trying to stay in your zone of genius and serve your clients and do what you actually do best, right, that is not where your brain space needs to be used. So in this case, the data was crystal clear, we did not need better copy in this case, the copy was good, yay, doing my job there. What we needed the audience to recognize is that this was the same company and they just had a new name, so here's how we improved the email open rates, we had to get the diagnosis first and then we created a targeted email sequence that directly addressed the rebrand, so we sent actually one to two emails from the old domain to trigger the recognition and get those open rates so we could get the message across of like, hey, we rebranded, here's our new name now, from here on out you'll be getting emails from this name, we're looking forward to keeping in touch with you, something along those lines. Then we shifted to the new domain once the subscribers understood the change and we sent more than one email because not everyone is going to read that email, it gets lost in the inbox, you need to send a couple at least so that the information gets across and we kept each email short and clear, it wasn't long-winded, it wasn't full of story, it was just like very informational, here's who we are now, here's who we were, here's who we are now, look for emails at this new name, that's it. So we decided to send it weekly for four weeks to be respectful of their frequency, not bombard them and that was it. The actual email copy did not need to be fancy, it just needed to bridge that recognition gap which is the problem that we had diagnosed. So I came in with having the data looked at, proposed the solution and then together worked with the CEO to say okay, what solution sounds or feels the best to you and that is what we came up with and that is the resolution that felt good for both of us, both on his end and then with my expertise and experience as well. And this is what strategic email marketing strategy actually looks like, it's not about chasing the latest email trend or sending 47 subject line variations and A-B testing, those aren't bad things but it's not, it was not the major needle mover in this case, it was about asking the right questions, trusting the data and building a solution that addresses what is actually broken. Most people get advice like fix your subject lines or send more often or add urgency and all those things can be great but honestly that often feels like just guessing based off of generic advice. Real email marketing strategy starts with diagnosis. So this matters for how you work with your copywriter or marketer or whoever it is that you have supporting you or if you would like to hire one to support you with this, what do you need to look for? That's a common question I get. So when you hire someone to help you with your email marketing strategy, watch how they approach the problem. Are they jumping straight to solutions or do they ask questions first? The difference between a band-aid and a real solution is usually this, how much time do they spend understanding your situation before prescribing a solution? Most people want to just jump right in because it's uncomfortable to hear, oh my email rates tanked and I was writing the copy, right? That's not an easy thing to say or receive but when you know the bigger picture you can calmly take receive that feedback, no it's not a personal thing about me and say okay let's dig into the data to figure this out. So if you're watching your email performance decline and no one's asking these three questions I just talked about, you might be getting just tactics instead of a strategy and tactics without real diagnosis will never quite fix the problem. So I mean it's like just taking a multivitamin without doing any testing to say well where are you actually deficient? So if you are ready to diagnose what is actually happening with your email marketing, how can you improve it, how can you if maybe it's okay but you want to make it even better and make it more optimized, I have two options for you. One is to join my free why isn't this converting five-day challenge. In five days we walk you through how to spot the hidden gaps between your email marketing strategy and your results. So you'll learn to ask diagnostic questions about the most common things I see happening in email marketing. You're looking at your own performance and you can pinpoint exactly where the breakdown is happening. Or if you're like I just want a personalized diagnosis and you can book a consultation with me, I'll pull your data or you can pull your data, have me look at it, ask these three diagnostic questions with you and give you a clear action plan based on what is actually happening with your email marketing performance. So that is what I got for you today. I have a blog in the show notes that go over FAQs, common questions about email marketing strategy, give you a little bit more nuance and point you to other resources about how to make your email marketing really work for you. So I would encourage you to go check that out. The link is in the show notes and I will see you next week.