I’m the Chief Email Geek at Inbox P.I. That means I wear all the hats – from strategy to implementation to analysis back to strategy all over again.

Like almost every other email marketer I’ve met, I got into email marketing by accident. I made a midlife career change into marketing. After I completed my MS in Digital Marketing, I landed a job with an agency. Their biggest client was an email marketing company in the healthcare and pharma space. A huge part of their content marketing included educational pieces on all aspects of email marketing – from deliverability to coding to design and everything in between. I fell madly, and absolutely in love with the subject, tried my hand at it and realized I not only enjoyed it but also had a talent for it! So, I knew I had found my niche!

We specialize in B2B email and lead generation. The majority of our clients are in the healthcare space, since that is where I got my start.

The biggest challenge my clients have is not in attracting leads as much as it is in nurturing, qualifying, and converting those leads they do attract. Most of my clients come to us with little or no content marketing. And, when they do have content, it’s less educational and not-at-all supportive of their prospects’ needs. In order for content to be an effective conversion tool, it must speak to the needs and wants of the prospect. Effective lead gen and conversion content must be useful, wanted, and it must add value to prospects.

Deep segmentation is the name of the game. We are at a place right now where we can segment our list based on a variety of behaviors, interests, etc. That trend will continue, with the help of AI to sift all that big data, and will allow email marketers to send deeply personalized emails that speak directly to the recipients.

Think of the customer first. The best email marketing strategy is one where you achieve your goals by helping your subscribers achieve their own. Every campaign you plan, and every email you send, should be helpful, well-segmented, and customer-focused. Engender trust, provide usefulness, and leads will be clamoring to buy from you.