Email marketing strategy
What is an email marketing strategy? Key factors
Email marketing is a channel that can bring important benefits and help you achieve your goals, so you need to keep in mind how to take advantage of email marketing, regardless of whether you are a small business/entrepreneur or a large, established company.
You need to plan your email marketing strategy carefully, because email marketing isn’t just about sending emails, it’s much more than that, it requires a strategy and a process to be successful.
Aspects you should consider before creating successful email marketing campaigns
There are several factors that must be taken into account if our email marketing strategies are to be successful and meet the KPIs we have set. In general, we have highlighted five key elements for successful campaigns:
Quality, segmented database
The basic premise that starts an email marketing strategy is the list of emails that will receive the messages.
There are several ways of obtaining a database. One of them is to create a good customer database with a lot of work and effort, a process that requires time and perseverance, but which will provide excellent results.
On the other hand, some companies choose to buy an email list, something we don’t recommend because the quality of these databases is generally not good and you’re connecting with people who haven’t given you permission to do so. The response you’ll get in this case will be very low or non-existent.
Therefore, to be successful with your campaigns, you should create your database and segment it so that you can tailor the message more effectively (thus obtaining a better ROI).
Effective subject lines
When the email is delivered to the recipient’s inbox, they only see the subject line you’ve created and the pre-header, so you need to pique their interest and encourage them to open the email. If you can’t overcome this first hurdle, no matter how well designed and intelligently written the email is, your email marketing campaign will have failed. Writing an effective subject line is essential.
The text of the message (with a copywriting strategy)
The text must be very well crafted and well written, so that the recipient of the email finds valuable information that is of interest to them and convinces them to continue reading.
Above all, you should be honest and not offer content that has nothing to do with the subject of the email, as well as writing the most persuasive text possible to keep the reader’s attention and encourage them to read the email in full. If they read the whole email, they will go through the different CTAs (calls to action) included in the body of the email and the conversion rate will be higher.
Email with responsive design
Emails can be opened on a wide variety of devices, with different screen resolutions and in different applications/browsers, so it is essential that the design of the email adapts as well as possible to all of them.
Therefore, the message should be created using a responsive design that automatically adjusts to the size where it is being displayed. To improve open rates, it is also advisable to avoid overloading the design with text and images.
Email marketing provider
The email marketing provider you choose for your strategy is also a point to take into account, because if you have any problems sending your campaigns, it is essential to have support that allows you to solve the problem and offer help.
Likewise, it is essential to provide all the necessary resources for correct sending and subsequent analysis, as well as automations to make your job easier.
How to create an email marketing strategy
Planning an email marketing strategy is simple if you are clear about the steps you need to follow. Mailrelay offers you those that are considered essential, although some niche companies may need to take different steps:
- Why do you want to send email marketing campaigns? The strategy must have one or more objectives, it’s not about sending for the sake of sending. So define your KPIs.
- What are your competitors doing? This is obvious, but you should subscribe to your competitors’ newsletters to find out the strengths and weaknesses of their strategy, so you can create a better one.
- Always with the customer in mind. Only if you are clear about who your buyer persona is will you be able to give them the right message and thus make them think of your brand when they are considering buying a service/product.
- Create a value proposition. You should always think about offering a value proposition to the email reader and try to differentiate yourself from the competition. You can’t be just another one of the huge number of advertising mass mailing campaigns they receive every day.
- Where to get subscribers? You want to get more subscribers and, if possible, lots of them, right? Well, first of all, think about where or how you want to capture them, and for that you need to know your buyer persona. After that, work mainly with the most relevant social media networks for your audience, blog, create ads, etc.
- Do you have a lead magnet to offer them? In any email marketing strategy it is essential to create a database of subscribers, so define a lead magnet that is of interest to your potential customers and that offers them a solution to a problem.
- Always review and improve. The work doesn’t end when the strategy is finalized and implemented. Once implemented, check that it’s working; if it doesn’t meet the KPIs, rethink whether it’s right and, even if the KPIs are met, keep adjusting them to improve and constantly learn so that your results don’t stagnate.