Every year, the end of the summer heralds a new beginning, a new chapter in the year, because for many, when summer ends, school begins. For those going back to school, the fall is a time to reconnect with friends, re-stoke one’s intellectual fires, and recommit to current and future plans. For marketers, the fall can serve the same purpose. 

Your customers – and your co-workers – are all back from their summers and their vacations, and the new brisk feeling in the air and the shorter days remind them that the lazy days are ending and it’s time to get moving again. 

Fall is therefore a perfect time to launch some of those email marketing initiatives you’ve been thinking about. Maybe it’s a new newsletter, more targeted than your primary newsletter, sent to a subset of your list that you’ve determined, by carefully analyzing subscriber response data, would be particularly keen on that type of content, or those types of offers.

Maybe it’s a new microsite to send clickthroughs to, one that uniquely showcases a particular product or service in a way that your email newsletter and your corporate website can’t.

Maybe it’s simply an opportunity to re-engage your list subscribers. Send them a survey to determine their needs and expectations, and then plan better ways to meet them. Send a message to the people you haven’t heard from in a while, offering them a special coupon for re-engaging with you by making a purchase. Not retail driven? Whatever your business, you can offer your readers something of value in order to entice them back into your brand’s fold.

Have an old list that you’re not comfortable using because of your permission-based principles? You can email that list once – just once – to ask them to (re)subscribe to your list. Tell them what they can expect, what benefit they’ll receive by subscribing, reassure them of your commitment to their privacy – and keep to your promise not to email them again if they don’t respond.

As you can see, there are myriad of ways you can shake things up in your email marketing program. And no matter how well your program has been running, a fresh take, a new idea, a creative approach can often result in improved responses. What you decide to do depends on your business, your subscribers, and how you can create new strategic initiatives around what you know about both.

For example, a new newsletter or different type of offer can work well for a segmented list in which different segments behave differently and have different desires from the rest of your list. Analyze your response data to identify people who would be most likely to respond well to specific offers or targeted content. Maybe they’re your best-performing segment and therefore, they’d respond well to a truly unique offer, a thank-you gift perhaps, that you wouldn’t send to your entire list. Or maybe they’re your worst-performing segment, requiring a coupon with a hefty discount to get them to click and purchase.

But more than a one-time offer, is there a whole new type of email program that you might launch, one quite different from anything you’ve been doing up to this point? Stretch yourself a bit and see if there is something new you can try, something that will target some segment in a new, more effective way.

A microsite, for example, can function effectively in ways that a single email cannot. With an email, you’re often sending fairly general content that you hope will appeal to most of the members of your list. Some people will open your email and read it and some will not. People who follow a link to a microsite however are clearly more engaged with your brand and more interested in detailed and comprehensive content. A microsite, because it’s a website not an email, can provide much more content, organized logically into pages and sub-pages and is therefore perfect for providing more knowledge and a richer experience than an email can.

Lastly, that old, dormant list from who-knows-when with a bunch of names you’d love to have re-engaged, but aren’t quite sure if you should email them or not. If you’re not sure, then play it safe. Simply adding them to your list, just because you can, is not the way to go. You might re-engage a few people, but for many, you’ll simply irritate them and ultimately damage your brand more than you help it. Better to approach them with respect for their time and their privacy. Ask them if they want to be re-subscribed to your list; if they don’t, then let them go. Times change, people move on -- that’s just the nature of things.

Remember the end of the semester, with the holidays and finals looming, when everything seems frantic and stressful? And summer, when the days are long, with a calm and idyllic feel to them. You can almost hear the insects buzzing, can’t you? Yes, the year has its phases and we all recognize them. As we come to the end of summer, we start to reenergize and to think ahead to all that we have to accomplish. This is what fall is about. Take advantage of it. Try something new. Because those frantic days of Christmas are just around the corner.

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