email marketing strategy

Email marketing has long been regarded as the most effective marketing channel, particularly in terms of return on investment.

However, as beneficial as this marketing channel is, many firms have neglected to take use of it. The explanation for this is simple: they don’t have a good email marketing strategy.

Let’s clear a few things off the table first before we get into all of the nuts and bolts of developing a successful email marketing plan.

Is Email Marketing Right for Every Business?

Many business owners wonder if email is the correct marketing tool for them. Before Covid-19, many brick-and-mortar companies boasted about their ability to function without email. Today’s world is a very different place.

Every business need email to properly connect with its clients.
It’s nearly hard to create meaningful relationships with your customers if you don’t use email. And keeping in contact with them is impossible in times of distress.

Aside from the crisis, whatever audience you develop on third-party sites (such as social media) might vanish immediately. That is why email should be the foundation of your marketing strategy because it provides you with:

  • Ownership
  • (Almost) guaranteed reach
  • Predictable conversions

Is email marketing appropriate for all businesses? After considering the arguments presented above, I believe you’ll agree that email marketing is beneficial to all businesses.

What Exactly Is An Email Marketing Strategy (And Why Do You Need One)?

So you’ve decided that email is an important part of your marketing strategy. What matters is how you make it work for you.

The answer is precisely what we’ll be talking about — everything that goes into creating a successful email marketing strategy.

What is the definition of an email marketing strategy?

An email marketing strategy is similar to a business strategy in that it ensures the success of your email marketing efforts.

In a nutshell, an email marketing strategy is a strategic plan that outlines the procedures and activities necessary to execute a successful email marketing campaign.

3 Reasons Why an Email Marketing Strategy Is Required

Many firms carry out their email marketing in the following manner:

Step 1

Create awesome email content

Step 2

Send it to your entire list

Step 3

Wait for the cash register to sing

Many companies plan their email marketing campaigns in this manner. That is precisely why their campaigns are a flop. This method is severely incorrect, since it overlooks the three key reasons why an effective email marketing plan is critical. They are as follows:

  • Provides direction: Just as a business plan provides you with a roadmap to follow in order to achieve your objectives, an email marketing strategy serves as a compass that guides your email marketing efforts.
  • Increases Efficiency: In any area, the goal of strategy is to increase efficiency. That is precisely what an email marketing plan accomplishes. It guarantees that each activity serves a purpose and contributes to the overall objective.
  • Enhances impact: Having a plan in place for how you’ll execute your email marketing campaigns will help them be more effective.

Your cash register will ring because having a strategy ensures that these three criteria are present in your email marketing campaigns. Let’s have a look at the steps that will help you create a successful email marketing campaign.

A Winning Email Marketing Strategy in 12 Easy Steps

1. Establish Your Goals

When it comes to developing an email marketing plan, the first step is to identify your major goals. To put it another way, what do you hope to accomplish with your campaign?

The following are some of the most common email marketing objectives:

  • Brand awareness is being raised and increased.
  • Nurture is the key to success.
  • Acquire new customers
  • Sell or upsell a product
  • Subscribers who have been inactive for a long time should be re-engaged
  • Relationships and rapport building
  • Introduce a new product.
  • Request feedback from customers.

The beauty of email is that it is so adaptable that it can be used to accomplish almost any business goal. However, as usual, make sure your objectives are SMART.

The next step in developing your email marketing plan is to assess your existing situation.

What email marketing strategies do you have in place and how are you using them?

What steps must you take to get from where you are now to where you want to be (your objectives)?

You’ll need to think about the following things in order to answer these questions strategically:

  • The results of your previous email campaigns
  • The advantages and disadvantages of your present campaigns
  • The tools you’re utilizing and how effective they are

How will you know if your campaign is working or not now that you’ve set your goals and know exactly what you want to accomplish with it?

Make a list of KPIs.

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are quantitative measurements that can be used to track the success of your efforts. More importantly, they assist in determining whether or not your campaign was successful. These metrics can also be utilized to improve your email marketing campaign revisions.

Here are a few of the more common ones to be aware of:

  • Number of delivered emails
  • Open rates
  • Click-through rates
  • Click-to-open-rates
  • Conversion rates
  • Unsubscribes
  • Bounces and complaints
  • Return on investment

So, how do you know which KPIs are the most important for your campaign?

Simple.

Choose KPIs that accurately reflect a measurable part of your objectives. Because the goals are different, your KPIs for a lead generation campaign may differ from those for a promotional campaign.

When it comes to conducting a successful email marketing campaign, automation is crucial. As a result, you should invest in the best email automation software available. An email service provider is one such piece of software that you just cannot do without (ESP). This is a service that lets you to save emails, segment them, and automate the majority of email-related tasks.

So, how do you know you’ve chosen the best ESP for your campaign?

  • Begin with your objectives.
  • What features and services are you looking for (for example, do you require a shared, dedicated, or multiple IP plan)?
  • Is it simple to grow your email campaigns?
  • Which metrics do you plan to monitor?
  • Consider the delivery rates of ESPs.
  • How good is their customer service?
  • Don’t forget to read customer testimonials.

These and other factors can help you find an ESP (as well as other email marketing tools) that fits your vision, budget, and requirements. Varied ESPs have different features and strengths, so don’t just pick the first one that fits your budget. Take a look around.

You may need to use a third-party tool or two in some cases to gain richer KPI data or more features.

Data is at the heart of a good email marketing campaign. And one of the most crucial pieces of information you’ll need is a thorough grasp of your target market.

This is where audience research comes into play.

Audience research, as the name implies, is researching deep into your target audiences:

  • Interests/Pain points
  • Purchasing habits
  • Online habits

Knowing your audience will allow you to “get into their thoughts.” In other words, it will assist you in determining what people desire, when they desire it, and how they desire it. As a result, you can give them with a fantastic user experience throughout their client journey.

So, where and how can you receive this information?

  • Begin with your documents. Your internal records are a gold mine of buyer information. Taking a glance at them will reveal information such as purchasing patterns, tastes, and much more.
  • Make use of social media. Another excellent source of data about your target audience is social media. You may learn about key demographics and psychographics of your customers.
  • Ask your clients. Who better to keep your campaigns informed than your customers? Simply perform a survey and wait for the results.
  • Keep an eye on your rivals. Who are your rivals’ customers? Obtaining this information might assist you in determining who your target audience is and what they truly require.

Up until this point, everything you’ve done has been foundational. Now we’ll go into the nuts and bolts of putting your email marketing plan into action. Of course, email marketing is impossible without an email list, therefore building an email list is the first place to start when launching an email marketing campaign. Not just any list, but one that is:

  • Engaged. It’s risky to send an email to those who aren’t interested in your material.
  • Relevant. Make sure that the individuals on your email list are interested not just in your content, but also in your product. Many individuals are interested in health articles, for example, but not everyone is interested in cannabis’ medicinal advantages.
  • Profitable. You’ll need to focus on establishing an email list of people who can buy your product in addition to being interested in it.

Building an email list that matches the above criteria may appear to be a difficult endeavor, but it is actually fairly simple. Here’s how to go about doing it:

  • Make the ideal lead magnet. Many people make the mistake of creating a lead magnet that is too generic. Aside from providing a lot of content, your lead magnet should also serve as a qualifier, allowing you to filter out subscribers who aren’t a good fit for your company.
  • It should be advertised in the appropriate venues. One of the areas where your audience research will pay off is here. Determine where your target audience mingles and promote your lead magnet there. To improve your conversion rates, create a landing page that is tailored to your target demographic.

Of course, this is also where ESP comes in as you will use it to create a database of those who sign up for your email list.

You’ve collected a significant email list; now is the time to launch your first campaign, right?

Wrong.

You must first segment your email list before launching your campaign.

Email segmentation is essentially the process of arranging subscribers with comparable characteristics into common sub-lists. This will allow you to treat each subscriber as an individual, which is referred to as personalisation. According to studies, tailored campaigns can improve income by 760 percent. And it’s all because of personalisation.

So, how can you effectively create segments to help you personalize your campaigns?

You can segment your email list based on a variety of criteria, including (but not limited to):

  • Demographics
  • Psychographics
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Business size

Your aims and company model are the primary factors of your segments. However, under no circumstances should an email campaign be batch and blast. Segment, personalize, and enjoy the action.

After you’ve segmented your email list, it’s important to plan out how you’ll send your email campaign. This is referred to as a workflow. To be more specific, a workflow is an email sequence that is triggered by an activity, data, or behavior of a subscriber.

The fundamental goal of designing an email workflow is to put yourself in your consumers’ shoes and walk them through the customer journey they’ll take through your emails. A well-designed email process will assist in identifying and removing points of friction in the client journey. It will also assist you in overcoming any objections that your customers may have.

An onboarding workflow is a simple example of an email workflow. Signing up for your offer could be the trigger in this case. The triggering email is a welcome. After a predetermined length of time (2/3 days), another email with personalized information is sent out.

A significant benefit of purchasing a high-quality ESP is that most come with templates and tools for constructing processes.

One thing that contributes to the effectiveness of email marketing is the ability to send several sorts of emails to your customers. This livens things up and keeps your readers interested.

It’s critical that you understand the many types of emails available to you. More importantly, you must decide the types of emails you will use in your email campaigns. Here are some examples of email types:

  • Lead nurture emails. These are sent with the purpose of onboarding new customers, driving brand awareness, and gaining customer trust. Examples include welcome emails and re-activation campaigns among others.
  • Promotional emails. Promotional emails are designed to drive revenue. These can be anything from product launches to special offers to upsell or cross-sell emails all the way to cart abandonment emails.
  • Engagement emails. As the name says, these are emails that are meant to foster customer relationships through regular engagement. Typical examples include newsletters, educational emails, and customer loyalty emails among others. While their primary purpose is engagement, you can include a bit of promotional content.
  • Transactional emails. Transactional emails serve the purpose of facilitating agreed-upon transactions between you and the recipient. Examples include order confirmations, thank you emails, and at times feedback emails.

Knowing which email types you’ll be sending in a campaign is critical because it will help you fine-tune your strategy to reach the campaign’s goals. It will also assist you in planning your content. This brings us to the next step in developing an efficient email marketing strategy.

You’re about to launch a successful email marketing campaign. That’s because you’ve nearly completed every critical piece of the puzzle. The email content itself is one of the final parts of your email marketing plan.

You must plan and produce content for each email in your pipeline.

No, you don’t generate material whenever the muse strikes. You must plan for it strategically. Here are a few pointers to assist you ensure that every email you send is received.

  • Know your audience. Yes, I’ve mentioned this a couple of times already but it needs to be mentioned again. Every email you create must be customer-centric, not self-fulfilling. In short, create content your subscribers want.
  • Understand your customer journey. Each email you create must help your subscribers move along the customer journey as smoothly as possible. That’s the main point of your email content.
  • Use the right language. Use lingo that’s common to your personas. Using the right language will help you connect on an emotional level. However, don’t overdo it. And as much as possible, avoid jargon.
  • Give your readers some eye candy. Visuals are powerful communication tools. Not only do they help convey your message more clearly, but they also help communicate on an emotional level.
  • Pay special attention to your subject lines. The subject line is one of the most important elements of any email. It can either make or break your campaign as your open rates hinge on them. Make sure to craft concise, benefit-driven subject lines that elicit opens.
  • Don’t neglect your preheader text. Your preheader text is your next opportunity to convince your subscribers to open your emails. Don’t leave this set to default. Instead, pen preheader text so powerful your subscribers will have no choice but to click open your email.
  • Looks do matter. Your email design plays a role in how effective your email content will be. Besides keeping your design clean and crisp, ensure that every element plays a role in directing the reader to your CTA.

Do your homework before developing content for your email marketing to make them more effective. Every email must be data-driven. It’s also not a bad idea to look at your competitors’ marketing and see what kind of material they use.

Everything is finally in its proper place. Isn’t it time to hit the send button?

Hold on to your horses!

We’re not done with your email marketing strategy yet, as much as your fingers are aching to click send. In reality, the final two stages are vital to ensuring that your approach is flawless.

One of these stages is ensuring that every aspect of your approach is in sync. You’ll need to do the following to accomplish this:

  • Create a pre-send checklist. A pre-send checklist is simply a checklist of everything that needs to be done before you send out your emails. Because there are so many moving pieces involved in running an email campaign, it’s important to double or triple-check that every nut and bolt is in place. One misaligned component could spell disaster.
  • Conduct A/B tests. No matter how good a campaign may be, it can always be better. This is why it’s important to conduct A/B tests on critical elements of your emails. It will help you run the best possible campaign for that time. While it may seem time-consuming, A/B testing is worth it as you’ll end up running the most effective (and more profitable) version of your campaign.

Many email campaigns have failed as a result of hurrying things. Always take a step back, read over your campaigns, and double-check that everything is in order before hitting the send button.

After you’ve sent out your campaign, sit back, relax, and watch the money come in. Unfortunately, it is what the majority of marketers do. Nonetheless, data collection is one of the most critical aspects of your approach.

Remember that in the digital era, data is the new currency.

Put on your overalls and perform some data mining instead of lounging on your laurels. This is critical because the data you collect will help you decide whether or not your campaign was a success. Indeed, this is where the KPIs you established previously come into play.

So, what do you do with the information you’ve gathered?

The first thing most marketers do now is compare their performance to those of their top competitors. While this is acceptable, it is not the best indicator of success. Even if you’re benchmarking against the same KPIs, there are a variety of other things to consider that may differ. As an example, consider:

  • Quality of the list
  • Relationships developed with customers
  • Segmentation strategies

These are just a handful of the factors that can cause two comparable email campaigns to produce differing results. So, how do you measure your success?

Compare yourself to others.

Compare your current campaign to your previous effort to determine whether or not it was a success. That is, as long as the campaign’s goals are the same. Again, data and statistics can simply obtained via your ESP or third-party solutions.

A solid email marketing plan is required for a successful email marketing campaign. Sure, building and monitoring one takes work, but it’s the only way to assure you succeed in cutting through the noise in your receivers’ inboxes. And if you need assistance in developing your email marketing plan, we are more than happy to assist. That is, Absolut3. So don’t hesitate to contact us.

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