We have all experienced an overflooding inbox, packed with marketing mails. And, we have all witnessed them dying a slow death in the trash, even without an acknowledgement. But, your emails can be different; they have a chance to stand out in the pool, only if you can follow a few simple steps. Email marketing is a powerful tool allowing businesses to connect directly with their audience. As you send across your message, email marketing gives you an opportunity to build relationships and drive conversions. If you have a well-planned strategy in place, your emails can prove to be instrumental in your success. Here’s how you can create an effective email marketing strategy to support that can help you achieve your business goals.
Define Your Goals
Before you sit down to draft your emails, define your goals. It gives you direction to decide all your future steps related to the email marketing campaign. What is it that you wish to do? Improve awareness, increase sales, or impart knowledge?
With clear goals, you can curate a robust strategy, from content to analytics. For instance, if your goal is to increase sales, base your emails on promotions, product launches, and discounts.
Understand Your Audience
The tricky part about content is that it needs to be altered as per the audience. What appeals to finance geeks might not necessarily appeal to the readers of Bookstagram. You have to tailor your emails to fit your audience’s preferences.
Start segmenting your list, based on parameters such as demographics, purchase history, activity time, device used, or even engagement level. With this, you can tailor your messages to different groups, making them more relevant and engaging.
For example, some who frequently shop from your online store will love early access to sales.
Build a Quality Email List
A successful email marketing strategy begins with a quality list. We advise you steer clear of buying any email lists. Not only will they increase unsubscribe rates but also can lead to potential legal issues.
Some easy ways to grow your list include:
- Have visible and easy-to-access subscription forms on your website. This makes it easy for visitors to subscribe to your lists.
- Motivate visitors to sign up by giving discounts or special offers for doing the same.
- Create value content like guides, whitepapers, etc. available for downloads in exchange for email addresses.
- Give incentives to users against subscriptions. For instance, early access for those who subscribe.
Craft Compelling and Personalised Content
Content is the heart of your email marketing strategy. Write compelling, concise, and clear content that conveys the message impactfully. Along with that, give a clear call to action that guides readers to the next step.
Above all, don’t forget to personalise your emails. Take tiny steps to ensure this: address the reader, use a real, reply-to-email address, and use a real email signature. These steps go a long way in building relations and credibility.
Design for Mobile First
90% of the emails addressed to personal IDs are first opened on mobile phones. Mobile phone-friendly emails have to be your first approach. When the emails are rightly optimised for cell phones, they usually generate bountiful revenue.
Make sure your content is readable on smaller screens. Use a responsive design that adapts to various screen sizes. Make sure buttons and links are easy to click, use large fonts, and keep your subject lines brief.
Automate Where Possible
With automation, you can make your email strategy a lot more efficient and effective. Make use of trigger-based emails to reach out to potential customers. Some examples include: if you’re an e-commerce website and someone adds a product to the cart and leaves, send them an email with a discount code.
You can configure auto-responder sequences to send out welcome emails to new subscribers or re-engagement emails to inactive users.
Monitor and Optimise
Lastly, without tracking and optimising, no email marketing plan is finished. You need to constantly analyse what’s working and what isn’t. As data accumulates, make changes and improvements to your email marketing strategies, such as improving your content, modifying your segmentation, or experimenting with new designs. Ongoing optimisation and tweaking are the secret to a sustainable email marketing endeavours.
