Tips to Build an Effective Email Marketing Strategy Plan
Don’t be intimidated by terms like “email campaign”. Consider it part of your overall digital marketing efforts (see more on this below) and come up with an email marketing strategy plan.
Email campaigns should also try to go beyond simply sending a coupon or new product notice. Try to provide value in every email you send and think of each email as a customer service response.
You want to convey something to your customer that’s relevant and answers a question or solves a problem. And when you send something that’s personalized, interesting and useful you’ll see less people unsubscribing from your list.
Your email marketing strategy plan should consider several factors:
What are your goals?
Before starting your campaign, think about what you want to achieve.
- If you’re looking for more website visitors, design an email that touts the resources, blog articles and special deals that can be found on your site. If you’ve recently revamped your site, send an email out to let your customers know about its new features and functionality.
- Looking to nurture leads or existing customers? Email is great for this and lets you segment your list to send certain types of messages to specific customers (more on this below).
- If you want an increase in sales, you can include coupons in an email, tout a special sale or let customers know about upgrades and new products.
- If you want more email opens and click-throughs, redesign your emails and do A/B testing with different subject lines, links, CTAs and graphics to see what gets the best response.
Who are your emails targeting?
Segmenting your email subscriber list, knowing what your customers are looking for and how they interact with your business and online presence are also crucial to creating your plan.
- Breaking up your email list into segments lets you send highly-targeted messages to the right customers. You can, for example, create one list for new customers and another for loyal customers and offer different strategies for each list…
- … Strategies like sending new customers a discount coupon and loyal customers pre-release and other special offers.
- Segmenting helps to find your ideal audience since one segment might respond better than another. This also helps you discover new ways your customers interact with your emails, website and business, providing insights that help you increase sales and ROI.
- When you create targeted segments, and send the right emails to the right customers, you’ll also improve opens, click throughs, sales and ROI while lowering bounce rates and unsubscribes.
- The email list-building experts at OptinMonster noted that campaigns with segmented lists had “open rates that were 14.37% higher, clicks that were 64.78% higher, and unsubscribe rates that were 8.98% lower than non-segmented campaigns by the same users.”
- You might be using both your own CRM data and third-party data (e.g., a purchased audience) when building lists but what works for one might not work for another. To see which audience responds better do plenty of A/B testing with subject lines, CTAs, design and content.
- Use software modules that capture the way website visitors interact with your site to show opt-in forms that ask for visitors’ email addresses. These modules are smart and can pinpoint what page someone provided their email address from. This lets you create a list of those specific visitors and send them email offers about the product on that page.
- You’ve got plenty of options when it comes to segmenting your list, including by age, gender, type of customer and lifestyle changes (buying a new car, recent empty nesters, etc.)
Social Listening and Talking to Your Reps
Actively monitor your social media channels and talk to your sales and customer service reps about the state of your business.
- Track social conversations around keywords, topics and phrases about your brand and competitors. If there are complaints about your product or services send an email campaign that addresses those concerns.
- Find out from your internal reps if customers are looking for an upgrade or a better way your business can take care of them. Send those customers an email to let them know about upcoming improvements!
- Join online forums associated with your industry to see what people are discussing, and use their concerns to create content and email sends.
Using Email with Other Marketing Channels
Email is the perfect complement to other marketing efforts and you can also increase customer reach, sales and ROI when you use more than one channel.
- You can retarget email openers with ad display retargeting for a pre-determined amount of time after the email drop has ended.
- You can also retarget email openers with ads in their social media feeds.
- Append your direct mail list with email addresses (or vice versa) for more reach and impact.
See more on this in How a Retargeting Strategy Works with Email.
The Different Types of Email Marketing
You’ve got several options to consider when deciding on the specific type of email to send.
- New product announcement – highlight new products with an eye-catching graphic and insightful, attention-grabbing copy.
- Informational – perfect for letting customers know about webinars, upcoming sales and events, product upgrades, website redesigns and more.
- Thank you – use these to thank people for subscribing to your list or making a purchase.
For several more examples see the Different Types of Email Marketing.
Figuring out your email marketing strategy plan is easy once you decide on a clear set of goals. If you have several goals keep them organized and don’t get your strategies confused. Then, set aside the time and resources and do plenty of testing to see which subject lines and designs get the best responses.
One great aspect of email marketing is that as your emails get better, you’ll see better responses (opens and click-throughs) that should translate to an increase in sales and ROI.
And lastly, try to add value to every email you send. Make sure your emails are relevant, interesting and provide something your customers want or will find useful.
Quick Links – Here’s What We’re Covering:
What is Email Marketing and How Does it Work?
The Different Types of Email Marketing
How a Retargeting Strategy Works with Email
What is an Email Service Provider?
TAKE 5 MEDIA GROUP – EMAIL STRATEGY AND DIGITAL MARKETING EXPERTS
For more than 15 years Take 5 Media Group has been creating email campaigns for ad agencies, Fortune 1000 and 500 clients and other companies. We’re also experts at building audiences based on lifestyle changes, demographics, intent to buy and more.
We then use our innovative marketing channels, that include email, content and influencer marketing, geo-fencing, social media and display ad retargeting, to get your message to these highly-targeted audiences.
To find out more about us, call Take 5 Media Group, Boca Raton, Florida, 561-819-5555, in New York at 917-201-7451 or visit our website at Take5mg.com.