Creating the Perfect Emailing strategy
An email marketing strategy may assist you in connecting with the right individuals and achieving your company objectives. Learn how to develop an email marketing strategy plan. Email is a really strong tool. In fact, firms receive a 40-dollar return on investment for every $1 spent on email.
But, before you can expand your email list, you must first devise a strategy. You’ll have a better idea of what you need to accomplish and who you need to target if you have an email marketing strategy in place.
Sixty-two percent of organizations that record their content marketing strategy believe it is successful. Only 32% of organizations with an unrecorded, verbal content marketing strategy feel it is effective.
Furthermore, documenting your email strategy increases your chances of sticking with it, reaching the correct individuals, and meeting your objectives.
Creating the ideal email marketing strategy that produces results does not have to be complicated. Especially if you adhere to these eight stages to an effective email marketing plan.
Determine Your Email Marketing Objectives
You wouldn’t run a marathon without first preparing for it. Similarly, you should not start designing your email marketing approach without first determining your goals.
Take a minute before you start establishing objectives to consider what constitutes a good goal. SMART objectives are good goals. SMART stands for:
- Specific: Avoid making goals that are too broad. Include specifics on how you intend to achieve your target.
- Measurable: Your goals should be measurable in terms of numbers or checkpoints.
- Attainable: When developing your objective, evaluate your available resources. You must ensure that your objective is within your existing budget, time frame, and skill set.
- Realistic: Your objective should be difficult yet attainable. Examine previous data or look at industry benchmarks to see what this implies for you.
- Time-bound: Set a deadline for yourself to achieve your goal.
Make sure that every objective you set for your email marketing plan adheres to these five principles.
Let us now establish your company's unique goals.
Not sure what type of objectives you should establish for your email marketing strategy? Consider your general business goals for this year, as well as changes to your email strategy that might assist you in meeting them. Make a list of the areas where you want to improve and set objectives based on it.
You might wish to concentrate on the following to get our creative juices flowing:
Growing your email list
With a larger email list, you’ll be able to connect with more people, inform them about your company, and persuade them to buy a product or service.
Increasing your email open rates
It will be hard to keep people interested and establish a relationship with them if a large number of individuals do not open your emails. Addressing this issue may allow you to expand the number of subscribers with whom you may communicate.
Improving your email click-through rates
A high email click-through rate indicates that consumers enjoy your material and your company, which can influence their purchase decisions.
Decreasing unsubscribes and spam complaints
Reduced unsubscribes and complaints can help you enhance your deliverability and guarantee you’re providing your subscribers interesting, relevant content.
Increase your email subscribers
When subscribers reply to your emails, you have the opportunity to engage with them personally and establish relationships that may persuade them to purchase
requesting and acting on subscriber feedback
You may produce emails that are more valuable to your subscribers by using subscriber feedback, which may help you boost open, click-through, and conversion rates.
So, how does this relate to you? Assume you established the following objective for yourself:
I want to increase my email list to 100 subscribers by the end of the year by adding a sign-up form to my website and reaching out to personal contacts and inviting them to join my list.
This is an excellent example of a SMART objective. It is particular because it outlines precisely what you want to achieve and how you intend to execute it. It is also quantifiable because it specifies the quantity of subscribers you wish to obtain (100).
While a realistic target may differ from company to company, for someone just starting started with email marketing, 100 subscribers in a year may be a very attainable objective.
Finally, because this objective specifies a deadline for completion, it is time-bound.
Bottom line: set objectives that are reasonable and feasible given your present resources and constraints
Identify Your Target Market
After you’ve established your goals, it’s time to figure out who your ideal subscriber is and build a persona for this subscriber.
By building a persona for your ideal subscriber, you will be able to attract the appropriate people to your email list and provide relevant and helpful material. This will drive your future email marketing approach, from how you build your email list to how you connect with your subscribers.
Your customer persona paper should provide answers to the following questions:
How would you describe your ideal subscriber? Male or female? Age? Are you married or single? Kids? Occupation?
- What are their passions?
- What is their line of work?
- What are their objectives?
- What are their issues and pain points?
- What may deter or prevent them from purchasing your product/service?
- What kind of material do they like to watch?
To answer these concerns and attract excellent subscribers, you must first understand your target demographic. Once you’ve done that, you’ll know who you want to target and how to persuade them to join your list. After they subscribe, you’ll be able to send them emails that will assist them in resolving their specific issues.
Design a customer persona
Once you’ve determined who your ideal subscriber is, it’s time to develop a client persona to guide your email marketing activities. Your customer persona will expand on the information you acquired when identifying your ideal audience.
To begin, think about what your top consumers have in common. You might even wish to contact a couple of these consumers via phone or email. Then, in a document or on a piece of paper, record all of the facts you have about your persona.
I recommend using Digital Marketer’s client avatar (their term for a persona) worksheet to help you create your persona.
Select the Best Email Service Provider
A key step is deciding which email marketing firm will build up and send your email campaigns. You must ensure that this firm ticks all of the criteria required to send attractively designed emails.
If you’re already an AWeber client, you’re already aware of our great email marketing platform and award-winning customer care department, which is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so skip on to the next section – Build Your Email List the Right Way.
Here are a few reasons why AWeber is the ideal choice for your email marketing plan if you are debating between AWeber and another email service provider.
Make Simple and Beautiful Emails
You may build your emails with our Smart Creator, an AI-powered email template designer that creates stunning branded emails in seconds. Or use our simple drag-and-drop email editor to generate bespoke emails in minutes — no coding necessary.
Hundreds of Email Templates
Our aim is to handle 90% of the labor so you can focus on growing your business. As a result, we have a library of over 700 mobile-responsive email templates from which you may pick.
Pre-made Email Reports
Email reporting that is simple to comprehend is essential for any effective email marketing strategy. That is why we provide you with access to best-practice dashboards and reports. These reports are intended to provide easy, actionable information into email and campaign effectiveness.
Automation of Emails
Assign triggers and flows to your emails to ensure that the correct message is sent to the right person at the right time.
Email Marketing Functions
What we’ve discussed here is merely the top of the iceberg. Everything you need is included in AWeber’s email marketing features:
- Email deliverability that leads the industry
- Tag automation
- Individualized communication
- Split testing of emails
- Segmentation based on needs
- Builder of landing pages
- And more, much more
Build Your Email List Correctly
So far, you’ve defined your email marketing objectives, created a client profile, and chosen an email service provider.
You must first create an email list before you can send emails. I’m sure you’d like to watch your list expand if you already have one.
How to Expand Your Email List
Your method for growing your email marketing list may vary, but one thing must remain constant: your consumers must opt-in to receive your emails. Spam is defined as any email sent without authorization.
- Here are a few permission-based email opt-in techniques:
- Make a sign-up form and post it to your Facebook, Twitter, or other social media sites.
- Create a registration form and place it on your website.
- On your website, experiment with pop-up forms.
- Create a lead-generating landing page using AWeber’s Landing Page Builder. Offer them something valuable in exchange for their email address.
- If you have a physical store, attend trade shows, or run a contact center, just ask for a potential customer’s email address.
- Include a “Forward to a Friend” link in every email you send.
Make a document for tracking and reporting.
You will be able to ascertain the following by tracking and assessing the success of your email marketing campaigns:
- Your content’s effectiveness
- Where you should make changes
- How frequently should you send emails?
- Which lead source is the most effective?
- Your email list’s health
What Information Must Be Included?
Microsoft Excel or Google Docs are two simple formats to utilize. The following information should be included in your document:
- Sending Date
- Sent to an audience (segments)
- A synopsis of the email
- KPIs for Email Marketing (Key Performance Indicators)
- The total number of emails sent
- Number of emails sent
- Rate of Delivery (Delivered/Sent)
- Opened Emails
- Email Open Rate (Emails Received/Opened)
- Emails that were clicked
- (Emails Clicked/Opened) Click-Through-to-Open Rate
- Opt-out Rate (Opt-outs/Delivered) Opt-out Rate (Opt-outs/Delivered)
- Commentary on the analysis
Why are Email Marketing KPI’s Important?
Each key performance indicator (KPI) tells a storyline about your email marketing approach. Knowing how to interpret each data can assist you in deciding what to test, resulting in a more successful email marketing plan.
Here, we will concentrate on the four most important email KPIs:
Delivery Rate
The number of emails delivered is divided by the number of emails sent.
Exp: 850/1,000=85%
Your delivery rate should be in the mid-to-upper 90s. Anything less than this number must be handled. A low delivery rate might indicate one of two things: poor list quality or the use of the incorrect email service provider.
First and foremost, consider the quality of your list. If your sends are segregated by the source they signed up for your list through (for example, a form on your social channels or a landing page), determine if one source is the cause of the poor delivery rate. Consider cleaning your email list if the poor delivery rate appears in many parts.
Open Rate
The number of emails opened divided by the number of emails delivered.
Exp: 400/1000=40%
Your subject line and maybe your subheader have a direct impact on your email open rate. What has considered a decent open rate varies by sector, but on average, a healthy open rate might range between 15% to 25%.
If your open rate is poor, experiment with alternative subject lines or preheaders to determine which style works best for your clients.
CTO= Click-Through-to-Open
Unique clicks divided by the number of emails opened.
Exp: 40/100=40%
A poor click through-to-open rate can be caused by a number of reasons, including your email design, content, call to action – in fact, any aspect in the body of your email.
It is more difficult to establish what is generating a poor click through-to-open rate, which is why you need to put up some A/B test splits to find the problem.
Rate of Opt-out
It’s never nice to have folks unsubscribe from your mailing list. But that occurs to everyone.
A decent (low) unsubscribe (or opt-out) rate is often less than 0.2 percent. However, anything above 1% is a concern. It might be difficult to determine why consumers are opting out, so be proactive. Set up a quick poll to inquire why people choose not to participate.
This will assist to determine how to deal with the problem if it arises. It will also help you fine tune your content so you can make the right adjustments on your site
Develop an Email Marketing Strategy Calendar
Making an email marketing calendar can help you plan your strategy. The purpose of an email send calendar is to make it easy to see when you want to send emails and to which segments. It guarantees that the appropriate messages are delivered to the right audience at the right time. This will help you to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Make your calendar in a way that makes sense to you. Color code various parts or messages to make it easier to see your approach.
Begin Sending Email Marketing Campaigns
After you’ve developed your email marketing plan, it’s time to build and send your first campaign. You know the audience and message you intend to deliver based on your calendar.
When generating your email, you may utilize a drag and drop editor or start with an email template
Email Marketing Best Practices
When drafting your email, keep the following fundamental email marketing standards in mind:
- Include a logo in your email. Make it clear who is sending the email.
- Depending on the objective of your emails, include a call to action.
- Drive visitors to a landing page
- Make a phone call
- Boost foot traffic
- Make an online purchase.
- Check that the email laws of the nation to which you are sending emails are obeyed. The CAN-SPAM Act exists in the United States.
Assess Performance
The results of the email campaign must be assessed once they have been sent. Add the campaign results to the document you created to track your key performance indicators (KPIs). Determine what worked and what didn’t, and how you might improve email performance for future sends.
To enhance your emails, you may need to do a series of A/B split testing across many campaigns.
conclusion
The most powerful way to find out what works best for your business is to always test your email campaigns. This will save you typos, errors, bounces, and other kinds of troubles that could have been prevented should you send out test emails prior to the official one.
To be a master of email marketing, you don’t have to be a professional marketer. AWeber is here to help you. We have hundreds of ideas to help you grow your business.
