PatronManager

As we all know, email is a fantastic tool for marketers. Even in today’s day and age, despite all of the other digital ways to reach patrons, it is still the most solid and reliable. That being said, creating and sending out emails should not be the only component of your digital marketing strategy. This article from Forbes entitled “Why Email Marketing Is Not Enough” is a great reminder that there is a lot more to it than that.

For starters, as the author of the article, Mike Templeman, points out, you should continuously be building your list. Indeed, Michelle Paul and I wrote the very same in our book “Breaking the Fifth Wall.” Building your list is your number one job. This should be relatively easy though, since you see your patrons predictably and in person at a specific time and place (i.e. your concerts, shows, gallery openings etc…). You can and should plan in advance to make a concerted effort to gather their email addresses at such events.

Once you have them, a well crafted email alone may be fine, but if you supplement that email with re-targeting ads on Facebook or Google, you’ll most likely have a better chance of reaching your intended audience.

Finally – you need a measurable goal. Why are you sending the email in the first place, and how will you know if you’ve succeeded? Do you decide in advance what you want to achieve? For example, if you send out a newsletter with the goal of generating new subscribers – how are you measuring whether that email campaign worked? By inbound leads? Are you tracking phone calls the day after and asking people why they called? All of these things add up to the “extra stuff” you should be doing to make your email marketing an even more powerful tool than it already is. I hope you’ll read the whole article, it’s worth it.

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