Don’t make the mistake of creating an email marketing campaign without having perfectly defined the objectives, actions or metrics and KPIs necessary to know the results. It is important that you create and define your email marketing strategy based on the results you want to achieve.
But how to create a good email marketing strategy? 2019 is just around the corner, so leave behind selling yourself as your competitors do and provide added value, that is, be different.
Did you know that email marketing generates a ROI of 4,300% in US companies?
If you follow the established rules or patterns it will be much more difficult to stand out among the inbox of your subscribers or customers. What is the reason for them to open your email and not others? What do you contribute to them?
It is time to put the cards on the table. You need to define your email marketing strategy for the next year, but don’t worry if you are not very clear where to start. In this post I explain step by step how to do it. Shall we start?
How to create an email marketing strategy that works
This is the time to consider changes and new actions in your digital marketing strategy.
In this article we will focus on how to create a good email marketing strategy. Do you have clear what steps to follow?
1º. Define your objectives
What do you expect to achieve with your email marketing strategy this year? The most important thing is to perform a thorough analysis of your website, some objectives that you can establish are:
- Build customer loyalty
- Sell a new product to those who are not yet customers
- Increase traffic to your website
2º. Set a goal
If you already have your goal defined, start setting the goals. Only in this way you can measure the results achieved and check if you are going the right way.
Taking into account the objectives that we established in the first point, you can establish these goals:
- Increase product renewals by 15%
- Increase sales by 10%
- Get 35 thousand monthly visits
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3º. Analyze your database
This is one of the most important points if you want your email marketing strategy to be successful.
I recommend that, before anything else, you clean up your subscriber list. What does this mean? Well, surely you have completely inactive subscribers or who never interact with your communications. If so, do you think they will do it this time? In addition, you may have email accounts that are no longer valid or customers who have decided to unsubscribe from your list.
Sending generic and massive emails can jeopardize the results of your email marketing strategy.
Perform a thorough analysis of your database to know who you are going to send the emails. Depending on the objective you define, it is necessary to segment or divide the database into subgroups to personalize your message and optimize the results.
4º. Develop a content plan
As we saw in the previous point, once you have the segmented database, it is time to establish a content plan in the short, medium and long term for each group or segment that you establish.
For a specific objective, for example, increase sales of an image editing tool, you could perform different actions throughout the year:
- Newsletter with a compilation of posts in which you talk about or mention this new tool.
- Sending a free 15-day trial.
- Customer reviews
- Complete guides and video tutorials to start using it
- Exclusive and limited-time promotions
- Promotional codes
Remember that in addition to segmentation, you have to take into account in which phase of the sales cycle your customers or subscribers are. It is necessary that the content provides value and adjusts to the user.
For a person who has just subscribed to your newsletter and has not yet bought anything from you, a guide to your product will not yet provide value if they have not yet enjoyed a free trial or do not know it. In this case, it is better to start by publicizing the advantages and benefits of your product, to offer a free trial and then an exclusive discount that encourages them to make the contract once that period ends.
5º. Establish a shipping plan
How often do you want to send your emails? How much time should pass from when you send your customers the free trial and send an exclusive discount?
If you already have defined the content you want to send to each segment of customers, you have to establish the frequency of your shipments. Of course, prioritize the quality of your shipments to the quantity. Your email marketing strategy will only work if you offer quality content to your subscribers.
6º. Measure the results
You will never know if your email marketing strategy works if you do not measure the results.
Depending on the objectives set, establish the corresponding indicators or KPIs. Some of the most used in email marketing are:
- OP or email open rate
- CTR or click percentage
- CR or conversion rate
- Cancellation of subscriptions
- Visits to the website
How to make my email stand out from the competition?
Email marketing is one of the online strategies that work best and that report a greater return on investment, but it is necessary to create good campaigns if you want to optimize the results. Do you know where to start? Getting customers to open your emails can become a challenge.
Here are some tips to make your emails stand out in the inbox of your subscribers and improve your conversions:
- Create a subject that attracts attention. It is the first thing your subscribers read and, if they do not like what they see, they will not open it. The subject must be clear and concrete (try not to exceed 50 characters) and you can add some promotion or discount that captures the attention of your subscribers.
- Emojis, why not? Adding an emoticon in the subject of the email can make it capture even more attention from your customers. For sample a button:
- Personalization, always! If you can include the name field in the subject of the email, why not do it? It is not something that you should do in all your shipments, but it can help your customers see that the message is more personalized and open the email.
- The sender also matters. Of course yes and the recipients take it very into account. If the employees of your company have personal treatment with your employees you can add something like “Sonia from Company A”. On the other hand, in other occasions it is better to include only the name of the brand.
- Perform an A/B Test. Another fundamental aspect to really know what works in your email marketing strategy is to perform tests. Create two versions of the same email and modify the subject, the sender, personalize the message… Which one has a higher opening rate? Analyze the results and keep the one that converts the most.
Finally, choose a good email marketing tool!
Today there are many email marketing tools that will help you create and launch your campaign easily and without the need to be an expert in it.
If you are not very clear which tool to choose or you have never worked with any, I recommend that you contact the CUERNOSOFT STUDIO team and consult about their new Email Marketing service for entrepreneurs and companies.
