How to Create an Email Marketing Strategy
So, it is a new year and we all have different aspirations and things we would like to achieve in our businesses. You may have been wondering how you can be able to leverage email marketing to boost sales. Well, you are in the right place. This article will guide you step by step so that you can create an email marketing strategy that prioritizes all the most important aspects of your marketing.
Have you been using this strategy in the previous year? How has it been? Ever wondered where and how you can improve your marketing efforts? Come with me and let’s cover every step to create an effective email marketing strategy that actually works for your campaign.
How to Create an Email Marketing Strategy
1: Establish your goals
One of the biggest mistakes that many entrepreneurs make is signing up for an email marketing tool and sending out campaigns without having their goals and plans in place. Before you can jump right into email marketing, the first thing that you have to do is think about the goals that you would like to achieve. The goals that you want to achieve will determine the type of campaign to send, who your target audience is, what content to use and the manner in which you can measure your success.
One thing you have to bear in mind is the fact that your email marketing goals have to be in line with the overall strategic goal of your organization/company. Maybe your goal is to drive many people to sign up for your product, or create new leads, or increase the number of attendees. Whatever your goals are, your strategy has to help you reach your target audience.
To help you better determine your goals, there are so many ways in which people use email marketing. For example, most people may use BuzzFeed to sell advertisements on their sites in order to drive traffic. Having that in mind, BuzzFeed simply sends out their email newsletters regularly to their target clients. These newsletters have links to exclusive stories about the business. The main aim is to increase traffic and hence, increase the number of conversions and revenue generated.
2. Build your email list
Now that you have your goals in place, the next thing is for you to have an emailing list of your prospective clients so that you can send your email campaigns to them and achieve your set objectives.
There are several ways in which you can build your email list. The choice of method to use is usually informed by the goals you would like to achieve. Some of the steps to follow include;
Importing a list of known contacts
If you are going to use emails to keep contact with important clients, it is only fair if you imported the existing contact list to your choice of an email marketing tool. For instance, if you are using Campaign Monitor, you can simply upload the list manually from an excel file or you can connect your tool to where your data resides. Once you sync this information, they will automatically appear on the email marketing tool you are using. Remember that you need your audience’s permission to send them emails.
Build an email list right from scratch
To start getting email contacts of your target audience from scratch can be quite daunting! However, this is not something impossible, rather something you can achieve.
If you have a valuable incentive coupled with simple opportunities for people to subscribe, then you are sure to grow your email list. This is something that is absolutely logic! It does not really matter how many subscribe opportunities you offer your website visitors, without an attractive incentive, you may not be able to get even one subscriber. Again, it does not really matter how attractive the incentive is, if it is not simple for your target audience to understand, you may not get them to opt-in.
So, the question is, what is a good incentive? How can you simplify the subscription process?
Well, some of the best ways in which you can achieve this is by simply using compelling content, first order discounts and free shipping or express shipping upgrade. The truth is, when you make your offer attractive and simple for your target audience, you are making it easy for them to opt-in. the choice of subscribe form you use is dependent on the kind of incentive you have to offer.
3. Select the type of campaigns you want to send
There are quite a number if email marketing campaign strategies that you can employ. The choice of strategy you go for is dependent on the kind of goals you would like to achieve. Here are some of the email marketing strategies you can employ;
Newsletter
This is something that you can distribute to your target audience on a regular basis with links to your product and a main topic of interest. Some businesses choose to send out their newsletters every month. For instance, if you are focusing on Hospitality management, you can employ the use of photographs and stories to sell your services.
If your main aim is to keep in touch with your target audience, using a newsletter is perfect for your campaign. This is because it will keep them updated on your products and they will have it in mind and keep them coming over and over again.
Announcements
This refers to an email that is often sent to email subscribers announcing to them the coming or the release of a new product, feature or service into the market. A very good example of this is the email that is sent target audience by TNT announcing to them the launch of a trailer for a new movie series called I Am the Night.
In other words, using an email announcement is the perfect way to keep your target audience engaged and up-to-date with your latest products and services. While sharing information is the key goal, using an email announcement may play a significant role in driving traffic to your website or online store where they can make purchases and share the information with their friends through referral links.
Marketing offer
This is one of the primary ways in which any campaign you share with your target audience is received with the primary aim of stimulating a direct response. There are different forms that a marketing offer can assume. These include; a campaign that showcases the latest stock and persuades potential customers to buy or a campaign that offers a discount or a special promotion of a certain product or service.
In other words, with a marketing offer, you can be able to drive direct sales. It simply presents the product or service at a discount and it gives you a direct call to action which you can click through to their website to make a purchase-simplified and encouraging to the target audience.
Event invitation
This is an email campaign strategy that plays a significant role in increasing brand awareness of your event so that so many people are encouraged to attend.
For instance, I have been thinking of sitting a professional certification exam for project management. So, I received an invitation for the PMI strategic plan launch. The launch comes with details of the date, time and location where the event will be happening. It also includes information on how to RSVP.
As we already mentioned, the kind of strategy that you employ is dependent on the type of goal you would like to achieve. If you are aiming at driving direct sales, then you might find marketing offers and email announcements to be the best options. However, if on eth another hand you just want to keep your target audience engaged and up-to-date with your latest products, services, features, and offers, you may use regular newsletters to achieve your goals.
4. Create your first campaign
Now that you have your goals set and have built your target audience and selected the type of campaign strategy to use, it is time for you to draft your first campaign. With tools like Campaign Monitor, you can create beautiful email marketing campaigns very easy with just their drag-and-drop email builder.
To make your campaigns effective, it is important that you ensure your campaigns are easy to read. Based on research, adults have an attention span of about 8 seconds. With this in mind, you do not want to create a campaign that is lengthy and will make them skim through for something interesting instead of reading through everything.
The next thing is to use images and visuals in order to improve your audience’s engagement. Ideally, it is advisable to avoid using walls or block texts. This is because such things as videos and pictures are attractive and eye-catching. They stick in the minds of your target audience and helps make your content stand out!
The other trick here is to make your email campaigns personalized. Such techniques as marketing automation, third-party integration, and segmented lists play a key role in ensuring that personalization of your campaigns is simplified and effective. Your target audience is highly likely to respond to content relevant to their interest. You can add their names to the subject line to maximize engagements.
5. Measure your results
Once you have your email campaign out to your target audience, it is time to track how successful your campaign is. In order to achieve this, you can use Email marketing tools or website analytics tools to see the metrics.
In your email marketing tools, there is a report section that you can use to understand the manner in which people interacted with your email campaigns. For instance, if you are using campaign monitor, so many reports can help you achieve this. Some of the metrics that the report will present to you include;
Number of clicks and opens: this is simply the number of people that opened your campaign. This often involves first subscribing to your website and then going ahead to read the content of the email campaigns.
Open-rate: this refers to the percentage of all subscribers that opened the email campaign.
Shares: this represents the number of people who shared your campaign with their friends or Via Social Media Platforms Like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook among others.
A number of bounces: refers to the number of email addresses on your mailing list to which the campaign could not be delivered because of various reasons.
Unsubscribe rate: refers to the number of people who unsubscribed from your list through the campaign.
The number of emails not opened: is the number of unique subscribers who did not open your email campaign for one reason or another.
Click-through rate: is the percentage of subscribers who opened the campaign and clicked on a link on the email.
These metrics among others play a critical role in helping you understand how your target audience is interacting with your campaigns. This subsequently helps you to compare your campaign successes and hence, take a step further to evaluate what happened after clicking through your website. With all these data, you are ready to start making changes, testing them and evaluating their outcome as far as your email campaign is concerned in order to improve the open as well as the click-through rate.
Final thoughts
Email marketing is one of the most powerful campaign strategies that you can use to drive sales and improve the amount of revenue your business generates. This is because, with effective implementation of an email campaign, you can reach a wider customer base and achieve a great return on investment compared to other marketing channels available in the market.
Therefore, to get started with your email marketing campaigns, follow the steps outlined in this article. They are very simple and easy to follow when it comes to creating and sending out email campaigns. After which, you will be assured of unrivalled results. Good luck!
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