By Brian McKenna, VP Strategic Partnerships and Zach Labenberg, VP Client Strategy

DMi continued its webinar series recently with a deep dive into email marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic. If you missed it, we’ve got you covered in this two-part summary where we’ll review Zach and Brian’s insights into what they are seeing from clients and the space. In this entry, we recap how brands best positioned themselves for the crisis. Part II focuses on how brands successfully shifted strategies during the pandemic and found success through smart adaptation.

No brands were intentionally planning for the scale and ferocity with which COVID-19 has shaken the world. Truly, the needs and use of email marketing have radically shifted in a few short months. The following are five strategies that brands implemented over time to position themselves to succeed during the upheaval.

Capturing First-Party Owned Opt-In Subscribers Before COVID-19, brands succeeding with their email marketing were devoting forethought and resources aimed at capturing a substantial share of first-party owned opt-in subscribers rather than being content to grow lists organically. This entailed not only focusing on subscriber growth but judging how much of the customer base was represented in the database and could be communicated to cross-channel, especially through email.

Those efforts have proven even more advantageous today, as all businesses have experienced disruption to normal operations in one way or another, whether through changes to inventory, distribution channels, demand or any of the myriad of COVID-19 caused obstacles. Brands that invested in capturing inbox market share have had the most success in maintaining communication with their customer base. The biggest concern that we hear from new email clients is that their list is not proportionally representative of their customer base. As a result, they feel ill-equipped to communicate with the entirety of the customers through email. Brands that made a concerted effort to ensure their lists are proportionally accurate are in a categorically better position now.

Ongoing Email Engagement Correlated closely with the importance of market share, it is essential to invest in ongoing email engagement with both customers and a target market.

With the fluidity of the pandemic and the dynamic progression of consumers’ needs, brands need to connect regularly with their customers to provide updates. For brands that rarely communicated via email in the past, the sudden ramp-up might seem odd or off-putting to recipients not accustomed to being contacted through the channel. Alternatively, brands that have invested in a steady rhythm of communication before the pandemic are speaking to an audience familiarized and comfortable with email engagement and accepting – possibly even appreciative – of increased messaging during this uncertain time. Segmentation and progressive profiling practices

Brands that developed segmentation and progressive profiling practices are reaping the benefits now. For example, our client Campbell’s has devoted time and energy to learning which subscribers were customers of specific products (which purchase condensed soup, which purchase V8, etc.). Despite many of these customers not knowing the products even fall under the same banner, Campbell’s can leverage that segmentation and profiling to efficiently distribute messaging about product availability, a decided advantage when negotiating the obstacles of accessibility during the outbreak.

A second client example is a large cruise line, an industry immensely impacted by the pandemic. Their efforts over the past several years to identify their most loyal email subscribers with established engagement rates are now immensely valuable, as the brand has a starting point to begin reaching out to a vetted group receptive of its messaging. With this list of enthusiastic brand champions, they can begin looking for a path forward through restarting the promotional process.

Customizable and Flexible Email Automations Brands that have built customization and flexibility in their automation have benefited greatly through efficiently shifting communications and tone during the rapidly evolving pandemic situation. One example is a pre-COVID-19 welcome email was thoroughly tested and performing extremely well. However, its celebratory tone alluding to popping champagne in the office simply did not work in the current environment. Because customization was an area of previous investment, they were quickly able to seamlessly change out their welcome flow to a more tone-appropriate post-purchase message.

Pulling back from overly promotional flows if they did not make sense based on customer needs or availability of products has been a common theme during the pandemic. Having the luxury of flexibility has enabled brands to make changes quickly and without devoting inordinate resources to do so.

Regular List Cleansing One of our partners, FreshAddress – an email verification, validation and hygiene company that helps businesses clean, protect, and grow their email lists – estimates that roughly 8% of a subscriber base goes stale annually. Building into the processes and determining which subscribers are no longer valid, then working to replace them as part of database acquisition efforts (as well as avoiding deliverability issues) is an area where we have seen clients benefit massively.

When discussing regular list cleanse processes with clients, a common misconception is that it is reserved for those with suspect lists who have taken the shortcuts of purchasing and rentals. However, it has become a standard that our most sophisticated email marketing program clients perform annually.

Eight percent obviously does not entail cleansing half the list, rather skimming land mines off the top to avoid deliverability issues. It can be relatively easy to remove these from the file before they become an issue and having a regimented regular list cleanse process is the best way to do so. It can be a time-consuming project, and brands who were ahead of the curve were free to focus on more pressing COVID-19-related matters.

And what are some of those pressing COVID-19 pivoting decisions? How did brands successfully shift strategies during this unprecedented scenario? Check out part II of our Email Marketing Success During COVID webinar recap where we review how brands found success through their email campaigns amidst dire circumstances.