Ashley Levesque is the Director of Marketing at Demio, a simple, no-download webinar software with all the marketing tools you need to succeed. Ashley spearheaded multiple initiatives since she joined Demio in 2020, including a formal CRM solution, content pillar strategy, new newsletter, and a meditation webinar series. Read on to learn how she created a special newsletter, where she invests her time, and why knowing your ideal customer profile (ICP) is so important.
Know your audience’s desired outcome
“Whether it’s webinars or newsletters, it’s not enough to think you know pain points and address them with your content. You need to know the desired outcome of your audience, and address that instead.” – Ashley Levesque
One of Demio’s key ICPs are small marketing teams. Their desired outcome is to look good. Small marketing teams usually have the same goals and expectations as larger teams, and they want to drive revenue and impact their business bottom line.
Knowing this, Demio can then create content and a newsletter with that framework in mind. They can use it to identify what to write about, and what content won’t serve their ICP well.
Creating a new newsletter for marketing teams
Ashley launched the Do More With Less (DMWL) newsletter at Demio in October 2020. This was a separate newsletter from their general one, which shared Demio blog content.
The Do More With Less newsletter focuses on small marketing teams and is built for a marketer who needs to be responsible for direction, running campaigns, and managing team members. That means it’s full of ungated, tangible assets like templates, guides, and how-tos for building and executing a marketing strategy.
Getting newsletter signups on a brand new list
Ashley shares the DMWL newsletter on multiple channels, with the leading source being a banner on their website.
How Demio announced and shares the Do More With Less newsletter:
- On a banner on the Demio website
- Organically on LinkedIn, including Ashley’s account, Demio’s account, and the extended Demio teams’ LinkedIn profiles
- In the Demio general newsletter, which was an existing newsletter that shares their blogs
- In CTAs in blog posts
- As a featured action in their partner webinars
Differentiating newsletters when you offer multiple
As the DMWL newsletter grew, Ashley realized they needed to differentiate it from their main newsletter. Whereas the DMWL newsletter is for top-funnel leads, and rarely even mentions Demio, their main newsletter focuses exclusively on Demio content.
However, the popularity of the DMWL newsletter meant that subscribers didn’t necessarily know there was another newsletter option when they were signing up.
In the future, Ashley plans to clarify on the newsletter landing page that there are different newsletters available from Demio, depending on what content you want.
The results
Starting out, they set 3 KPIs:
- 500 subscribers by the end of December 2020 generated organically. They hit this goal within 10 days of launching the newsletter.
- At least a 30% open rate. The average email open rate in Demio’s industry is 18%, and Demio has gotten at least 34% on every email as of February 2021. Their average open rate is 38.65$ across 10 editions.
- An 80% or higher on their happiness survey. This hasn’t been scored yet, but will be collected on a simple Google form that asks on a scale of 1 to 5, how much do you enjoy the newsletter. The form will have a series of other questions, like how relevant is the newsletter to your job, and what content are you looking for more of.
Running a mini webinar series for brand affinity
In December 2020, Ashley ran a meditation series that consisted of 5-minute long meditation sessions. They offered these live, on-demand, and as automated events.
Live events were held three times on December 8, 15, and 18 at 10 a.m. EST. In total, they got 135 registrants.
On-demand events were available at any time someone wanted to watch, and got 91 total registrants.
The automated events were made of on-demand events, and set up to provide 6 pre-recorded sessions that were sent out on a schedule. This gave people more flexibility on the time and dates they joined, while still giving them structure.
The benefits for this webinar series were twofold;
- Brand affinity – getting people to spend time with the brand and providing value during the holidays in a pandemic.
- An introduction to Demio – getting people to see what the software is like without being too sales-focused.
Although Demio decided not to use the series as a lead-generating tool, and didn’t add registrants to any sales drips, Ashley got a number of LinkedIn requests and messages showing appreciation.
https://rachelandreago.com/ecommerce-webinar-marketing-strategies/
Deciding when to join partner webinars
Aside from their webinar series, Demio also participates in some partner webinars.
When Ashley is deciding what events to join, and who to partner with, she starts with Demio’s audience in mind and takes a look at the relevance of the partners’ audience.
Here are some of the questions she asks:
- Does this brand have the same ICP and values?
- Do they have the same point of view on the topic?
- Is the topic relevant to our audience?
- Do they create good content, and have they in the past?
- How will this serve our business goals, and OKRs for the quarter/year?
Ashley’s advice to marketing teams: Know your audience and set expectations
Know your audience and what outcomes they want. Demio’s newsletter includes a wellness section because marketers need more than just marketing content to live their best lives. They need to be good leaders, manage their stress, and stay grounded.
“Know what your audience wants, not just what segment they belong to in your funnel. Find out what brings them closer to their desired outcomes.” – Ashley Levesque
Time-block for content creation and have a detailed system and process for what that looks like. Ashley uses time-blocking to source, vet, and identify good content for the Do More With Less newsletter. She outlined a formal process with colleagues for putting the newsletters together to get it shipped every week.
Manage expectations for your content. When you promote your newsletter, clarify what people should expect in your landing page and welcome email.
Answer questions like:
- How often to expect the newsletter
- What type of content will it include
- Who is the email coming from
- How do they unsubscribe
What’s next?
Ashley’s focus in 2021 is going to be getting HubSpot up and running so they can use it to see and analyze trigger points and sources for their leads.
“I’m excited to show Demio’s team the results all their work is driving toward.” – Ashley Levesque
Demio was also recently acquired by Banzai, so Ashley is excited to learn more about their audiences’ desired outcomes and how they overlap. Ultimately, Demio is all about making marketers’ lives easier.
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