Better Email Personalization and Deliverability with Zoho Campaigns Topics Management
If you're a current Zoho Campaigns user, you have likely seen this message:
"The Topic Management system is getting restructured with new implementations. We recommend that you migrate to the updated version before September 29, 2022."
What does this mean exactly? What is Topics Management, what are you supposed to migrate, and how do you do it? These are all questions you have likely asked yourself. I have spent a lot of time researching this update, so I'm here to help you navigate these (and future) Zoho Campaign updates.
What is Topics Management?
Email marketing no longer consists of one type of email. You are likely sending various communications to your contacts, such as product updates, promotions, feature updates/changes, and newsletters. Your subscribers (contacts) may only be interested in some of those topics, but not all.
Topics Management with Zoho Campaigns gives your subscribers more control over the content they're interested in receiving and allows you to organize your contacts under these various topics to ensure you send the correct email to the right contact (or segment of contacts). With this feature, you can better inform your contacts of the various email campaigns/topics your brand sends.
The current process and limitations
Topics have always been an option within Zoho Campaigns, but there were some limitations, and this update addresses many of those. Currently, if Topics Management is enabled, each topic is required to be mapped to a list. While users could map a single topic to multiple lists, multiple topics could not be mapped to a single list. If a contact has to be a part of two topics, you had to create two lists with that contact present in each.
The current process for your subscribers isn't very user-friendly. Currently, when clicking "unsubscribe," the contact is unsubscribed from only that list and will need to take an extra step to unsubscribe from all communications. If the contact wants to manage their preferences, they will see all the lists you have created, and if you don't organize and manage your lists well (which many don't), the contacts will see a confusing page with a lot of lists, resulting in a poor user experience.
Because of these limitations, lists had to be used for topic management instead of the original purpose of contact classification and organization.
What will this update accomplish?
Zoho is revamping the relationship between a contact, topic, list, and organization with this update. Topics will now be maintained at the organization level and will not be associated with a list but instead directly associated with contacts.
This update enables you to associate one or more topics with each contact rather than a list and introduces the opportunity to associate an email campaign with a Topic. Every email campaign sent will now require you to choose a topic in addition to the mailing lists or segments you've selected.
List and Contact Management
Until now, lists were somewhat confusing to manage. When adding contacts, every contact was required to be added to a list. The recipient of an email campaign was either a list or segment. Hence, lists had to be used to manage the types of communications your contacts received rather than organizing contacts.
With this update, when adding contacts to your system, you will directly import them to the "All Contacts" database and with the option to set up the mailing list association(s) later. You'll also have the opportunity to choose the subscriber type for your contacts which include:
A marketing contact: Contact can and will receive communications
A non-marketing contact: Contacts will not receive communications and will not go against your contact count
An unsubscribed contact: Contact will not receive emails, be added to the do-not-mail list, and not go against your subscriber count.
Email Campaigns
It will be mandatory to associate an email campaign with a topic; only those contacts subscribed to that topic will be sent that email campaign; if a contact is not subscribed to the topic for which an email campaign is sent, the contact will be excluded (regardless of the selected list or segment).
Every email campaign must have either the "Manage subscription" or the "Unsubscribe" link in it (when clicking "unsubscribe" in previously sent emails, the contact will be removed from the list, not the organization).
Unsubscribe and Contact Preference Management
As mentioned, there was some complexity for those contact who wanted to unsubscribe from your organization or change their email preferences. Now, contacts can unsubscribe from all communications from you in one click when clicking the “Unsubscribe” link in the email and use the manage preference link to update their topics of interest. These changes simplify how to unsubscribe or choose among poorly named lists.
Advantages to Using Topics
Since your contacts have more control (and a better understanding) over the topics they're subscribed to, and you have better contact organization, some advantages include:
Lower unsubscribe and improved open and click rates by sending more targeted emails
Build longer-lasting relationships through more personalized emails
Improve deliverability
Topics Management Update Timeline
New Users: Zoho will enforce the new topic management setup for all users that sign up after September 21, 2021.
Existing organizations that do not have topics enabled can enable it at any time until September 30, 2022.
Existing organizations that already use topics can migrate to the new topic management system until September 30, 2022.
Beyond September 30, 2022, Topics Management will be mandatory and enabled for ALL Zoho Campaigns users.
Once Topics is enabled, the change cannot be reverted
Setting up Topics
Before you set up topics, you will need to choose between two types of hierarchy, and define your products and/or topics.
Brand - Topics
Brand - Products - Topics
Brand - Topics Scenario
In this example, Sara currently writes a home design blog. She sends out various types of communications to her list of subscribers, such as product updates for industrial designers, promotions on the hottest designs, and a monthly newsletter recapping everything.
If you or your company offers a single product or service relevant to that product, you can choose the default Brand - Topic hierarchy.
Brand - Products - Topics Scenario
Sara's Beauty Company (brand) offers skincare, hair care, and makeup (products). Her email campaigns are based on product updates, promotional offers, and an informational newsletter (topics) for each category of products.
If you or your organization offers multiple products or services, and your goal is to send emails specific to each product, you should choose the Brand-Product-Topic hierarchy.
At first, I was overwhelmed by this update, but now that I understand it, it is a move in the right direction for Zoho Campaigns. Additional updates are coming for Segments and the Zoho Campaigns / Zoho CRM integration that further supports this update, but we'll cover those updates in the next post(s).
If you have questions or need help migrating to the updated Topics Management System, we're here to help!
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