When I became a mom, I realized something terrifying: I was in charge of another human being and I had absolutely no training.
Who let this crazy thing happen?
I did what any Type A business-minded woman would do: I found every book I could, tapped into every person I knew, and went into Full-On Crazy Learning Mode.
It didn’t take long for exhaustion to set in.
There was no shortage of experts. There was no shortage of ways that work.
Whether the topic was breastfeeding or teething, sickness or vaccines, sleeping and napping or discipline and religion, there were shelves of books, hours of opinions, and countless resources.
How was I to know what was right?
What if I ruined my daughter?
When would I find the answers?
Turns out, it’s every bit as complicated and challenging as I first sensed.
And it’s also quite a bit easier than I thought.
Not so different from marketing, as a matter of fact.
In the last two decades, I’ve learned…
You can spend years at the book store and on the internet.
You’ll find all sorts of perspectives on email marketing and what sort of open rates you should shoot for.
You’ll get one expert to point you to click-through rates as your measure of success, while an equally expert individual insists that click-to-open rates matter more.
Then there’s the discussion of how your emails should look. And what they should say. Whether they should have long subject lines or short ones.
And we haven’t even gotten into the discussions of ads…or customer retention…or pricing strategies…or any of the hundred of other categories that fall under the umbrella of marketing.
But, brace yourself…
…there is no “right” way.
There is, instead, the way that’s right for you.
And the way you find what’s “right” is to test and try things.
(Sad truth: there’s no “easy way” either. But there are tips and tricks that can help, and we share as many of those as we can!)
Be warned:
“Right” can — and does — change.
“Right” is — and should be — open to interpretation.
You can measure it…by observing what works, by measuring the metrics of your campaign, by testing and trying other things.
And that’s exactly what you should do.
Keep learning and reading and looking.
Keep trying new things and testing the old things.
Keep on.
Just like parenting.