Most brands send campaigns that all look the same: push the product, run a sale, repeat. That's one third of the strategy. Here's what the full picture looks like.
Bucket 1: Educate.
A third of your campaigns should be pure education. Educate people about your industry, your brand, your collections, and your products. Pull from your FAQs, your customer support tickets, whatever people are actually asking. Different customers are at different awareness levels, so the education should match. Someone who's never purchased needs different content than a five time buyer. Most brands underinvest here because it doesn't feel like selling. But it builds the proof and trust that makes selling easier later.
Bucket 2: Build relationships.
This is the one almost nobody does well. Storytelling, behind the scenes, emotional content that connects with people one to one. We run a weekly email like this for one brand, a Friday newsletter focused purely on brand and relationship. It's their highest revenue email of all time. Beats Black Friday. Beats product launches. Text based tends to work better here, maybe with a few images. You can ask for replies, run feedback loops, and just talk to people like humans. The ROI isn't immediate, but long term it compounds harder than anything else.
Bucket 3: Sell products.
Most brands do this part, but they do the same thing on repeat. Think outside the box. Run a big offer once per quarter, email exclusive or retention exclusive. Test secret sales where customers only see the offer on the landing page. Test different offer types: percentage off, dollar amount off, buy one get one. Reframe the same offer with different angles and messaging. Tie channels together, send a physical mailer to VIPs then follow up with an email referencing it. Use engagement data to push harder on people who are close to buying. Add timers, reply based emails, and urgency for specific segments.
Volume and segmentation:
We recommend 20 to 40 campaigns per month. Some clients do more, some do less depending on the situation. But you're not sending all of these to your full list. Segment by non buyers, buyers, and VIPs. Talk to each group differently based on where they are in the buying process.
