Every strategy is a set of goals and a step-by-step action plan for its implementation. Talking about email marketing strategy, this plan highlights the way you communicate with the prospective leads and the customers to promote your brand, upsell your products and build loyalty among the target audience.
How to develop such a strategy that will drive ROI from email marketing? This is a pretty relevant question, given the fact that everyday an average user gets more than 100 emails. So, let's find out how to create an email marketing strategy that will help your brand stand out.
Determine the Channel That Brings You Most Subscribers
Many people underestimate the importance of the source that brings you subscribers. It's about understanding the most effective communication channels through which you get subscribers.
Why is this information needed? Then, it will be an effective channel of communication with your consumer. Analyze what brings you more subscribers. For example, this is an advertisement, a website or social networks. This information will give you an idea of how you can communicate with your audience and where to increase your marketing efforts in the future.
Suppose you attract most leads with the help of lead magnets with the discounts. So, it would be logical to suggest that they would like to buy from you but expect more promo offers and better prices.
Take One More Look At Your Target Audience
To create an effective strategy, you must clearly understand the specifics of your target audience. Understanding your target audience needs and pain points is essential for writing such letters that will force the addressee to perform the target action. With these insights in mind, you will be able to create a personalized message that will increase engagement, build trust, and of course, increase your sales.
Segment Your Subscribers Base
Segmenting your subscribers into smaller subgroups depending on their distinctive features is one of the best email marketing practices. Suppose your company sells cosmetics. Your audience is women between the ages of 18-55. You have a promo offer for a face cream for the age category 35+. Sending an email with such an offer to all subscribers is a waste of time, as the 18+ and 45+ consumers are the least likely to make a purchase.
But, if you only send this proposal to a group of 35+ subscribers, it will bring more results since this offer is suitable only for this group of consumers. On a psychological level, such a personalization will show your concern and understanding of the customer's needs.
Therefore, segmenting your customers is an opportunity to create personalized marketing emails and demonstrate that you know your customer and their necessities.
Determine What To Write
After you analyze your audience and segment your users, you need to decide what you will write. You can use the following questions to figure out where to start:
- What do you want to tell your consumers?
- What's the general strategy for your content marketing?
- What action do you want your consumers to perform (subscribe to your social media, find out more about your products, choose the best item from the recommended list, use a discount and so on).
If we talk about the last point, then let's go back to the examples from the previous point where the purpose of your letter is to sell promotional items. That's why you should prepare a relevant promo for each age group offering the products that will correspond to their age and solve their problems. In the case of this particular example, this is a promo for beauty products that will be age-appropriate for each segment.
Design Your Letters
The design of the letter is an important point in developing an email strategy. It is worth following a single style that you will adhere to so that your consumers begin to recognize your brand and your tone of voice among hundreds of others. At the same time, many users get used to the structure of the letter, and when it changes they can react negatively.
After you have coped with all the above points, you should not immediately start the mailing. You need to make sure your email looks perfect, so test the ways it is displayed on different devices.
Make a Schedule
Spamming the users with letters is the worst approach that will result in low open rate and a lot of unsubscribed users. For this reason, it is worthwhile to think about the mailing schedule very carefully.
There are different options, but as practice shows, to identify the optimal schedule, it is worth analyzing the effectiveness of your emails. To begin with, you can start sending a letter 2 times a week to see how it will work for your consumers.
Also, keep the goal of the letter in mind. For example, you can make one newsletter introducing new products to subscribers and offer unique promos for your subscribers in the next one.
In any case, your newsletter should not be intrusive and chaotic. With the right email marketing, users who are interested in your product or service will determine your frequency and will expect your emails.
Keep Holidays in Mind
Also, don't forget to adjust your email marketing strategy on the eve of the holidays. This time is a great opportunity to send a few more letters, offer more favorable discounts and just congratulate your customers, within them all the best.
Prepare for the holidays in advance, determining what products you want to offer and what discount you can provide. For example, on New Year Eve, most companies begin to send the promo letters one by one, increasing the discount in each letter and encouraging customers to stock up on gifts.
Automate the Mailing Process
Automation is something worth looking into. This is an opportunity to save your time and focus on solving other equally important tasks. At the same time, many tools allow you to get some analytical data on the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy. Also, they allow you to receive notifications about whether the users have read your email or not. This will be a great bonus and an opportunity to analyze your effectiveness. So, research the tools for automatization and reporting to always stay tuned into the ways your email campaign performs and streamline routine tasks.
The Bottom Line
Writing an email marketing strategy takes research and effort. But if you do it once, you can create effective emails for your business. Many people spend a lot of time on creativity, but not always creativity is decisive. Use these tips to build your strategy, and don't forget to analyze the results promptly. Such a smart tactic will allow you to constantly improve your strategy, driving better ROI from your email campaigns.