8 Steps to Creating a New Email Marketing Strategy

 

As a business, to be competitive in today’s world of digital marketing, you must have a thorough email marketing strategy.

In terms of marketing, email marketing has one of the highest ROIs out there. This is because, with email, you have the opportunity to get personalized, customized, relevant information right into the inbox of prospective clients.

Jump-start your new email marketing strategy by getting familiar with the 10 steps below.

1. Establish What You Want Out of Email Marketing

Before developing your email marketing strategy, you will first need to outline your goals. Take the time to write these out the same way you would when developing your business strategy. You cannot achieve your desired results without first having a clear understanding of what those are. Keep in mind, that objectives and results will vary from business to business.

A goal of your email marketing campaign can be to:

Attract more visitors to your site.

By using compelling copy, graphics and promotions, you can drive clicks straight to your site from your email campaign. 

Gain more potential customers.

Your email newsletter can be a lead magnet. By offering valuable content, people can opt-in to subscribe to your email newsletters. There, you have gained potential customers to add to your list.

Nurture the relationship with your current audience.

You should always be looking to maintain or improve the relationship you have with your audience. Do this with email marketing by sending valuable content. This will establish trust and build your authority.

Convert potential customers into current customers.

An appropriate email campaign might just be the last push needed for those customers who have been deciding whether or not to make a purchase.

With a myriad of potential goals and benefits of email marketing, email marketing is a core part of growing brand strength and awareness for both businesses.

2. Define Your Audience

You probably already have a clear understanding of who your target audience is for your business. Review your ideal customer profile and apply that to your email marketing campaign. Just as you need to understand your objectives for email marketing, you need to fully understand who you are trying to reach before executing your strategy.

Study your buyer persona, evaluate what they need, as well as how they consume content, and apply that information to your email marketing campaign.

3. Growing Your Email List

What to Do

Once you have set the company’s goals, you can start to build your email list. There are many ways to do this. First, you need their permission to send them emails. Create ways for people to opt-in via your website and social media platforms. Offer an incentive for people to join your email list. What will they get in exchange for sharing their email? A discount for your good or services? An informative guide or eBook? Updates and news? Whatever it is, what you are offering must be appealing enough for people to want to opt-in.

What Not to Do

Don’t get frustrated if you only have a few people in the beginning. Growing a large email list is something that will take weeks, months, and even years. It’s a steady process.

Don’t take those first few subscribers for granted or neglect them. Treat them like royalty. When you nurture the relationships you have, it can help your email marketing campaign grow organically with word-of-mouth marketing and referrals.

4. Customize Your Email Campaign

Keep Your Target Audience in Mind

Your target audience will also inform how you create your email campaign. Within your target audience, you likely have subcategories. Consider what stage of the buyer’s journey the individual is in. For example, are they just exploring? Send them some informative content to build their awareness and curiosity.

Some subscribers may be more interested in emails containing information about new products or services while others may be interested in reading content that is educational and informative.

You can separate your email list into different categories and provide your subscribers the option to opt-in to the types of emails they would like to receive.

Additionally, personalize every email. Include a greeting with each subscriber’s name. Instead of writing “Hi subscriber!” or “Hello valued customer,” greet the person with their first name. This adds to the engagement and likelihood of the recipient opening the email and reading it.

5. Set a Schedule

After you have created the content for your email campaign, the next step is to set a schedule. The first thing to do is to let your email subscribers know when and how often they will receive emails. Doing this will accurately set audience expectations and reduce the possibility of people on your email list unsubscribing or sending you to the spam folder.

Don’t bombard your subscribers with daily emails either. Set a schedule of one to two emails per week on specific days and be consistent about it. For example, don’t send three emails in one week and then nothing for two weeks. Consistency is key like anything else in running a business.

6. Track Results

Now that things are starting to take off, it’s time to measure the results. Marketing is all about measurement. There is no point in marketing if it isn’t garnering you the results you want or any results at all, so this is arguably the most critical part of email marketing.

You should be tracking results in accordance with the goals you have set. If your goal was to gain more leads, ask yourself if you’ve achieved the number of leads in the set time period.

Along with your goal-led results, keep track of the performance of your emails.

How many people are opening your emails?How many people are unsubscribing from your email list?How many clicks are the call-to-actions in the email getting?How many of your subscribers are being converted into customers?

7. Trial and Error: Regularly Test New Methods

Highly effective components of successful email campaigns include high-value content (either written, video, or both), sleek, eye-catching images (great for increasing engagement, strengthening your brand, and breaking up text), and a call-to-action at the end of every email.

Successful email marketing is a process of trial and error. Consider testing every part of your email campaign to see what works best.

Make sure to A/B test the following:

The opt-in form: test its design, copy and value proposition. Test what kind of opt-in form gets you the most emails.Subject line: test the length, the tone, the capitalization, and the value proposition. Test what subject line garners the most opens from your subscribers.Preview text: similar to the subject line, test the length, the capitalization, the tone, etc.Copy: test the layout of the copy, the word count, and of course the content of the copy itself.Design: your design should be within the branding of your company but make sure to test the layout, the sizes of the email components, the number of images, etc.CTA: test the call-to-action button. Experiment with color, font, size, and copy of the button. See what gets the most clicks.

8. Never Stop Studying

Along with regularly trying new methods to grow your email subscriber base, you should keep yourself informed on the latest email marketing trends and read up on helpful email marketing tips. If you are brand new to email marketing, start off by sticking to tried-and-true methods.

Additional Tips

Timing

Another important element of email marketing is timing. One study shows that the best time and day to send an email and get higher response rates is Tuesday at 11 AM EST. Along with knowing the best times to send emails to your subscribers, you should ensure your emails are optimized for mobile devices since 55% of emails are opened on smartphones.

Write Persuasively

Many great email marketing campaigns include emails filled with eye-catching graphic designs, videos, and photos. However, the copy is just as important as the rest. 

Are you launching an email marketing campaign or looking for new ways to enhance your current email marketing campaign? Contact the team at ContentWriters.com today to learn how we can help you grow email marketing and lead generation!

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