How to Create Your First Email Marketing Strategy Successfully
Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools marketers have at their fingertips. A tool that’s been around for decades and to this day, provides results that other marketing channels simply cannot compete with in terms of ROI, engagement rates and conversion rates.
With over 4 billion email users worldwide email marketing has the largest potential audience of any channel and allows brands direct access to consumers something that social media marketing does not.
We put together a guide on how to get started with creating your first email marketing strategy:
When to Use Email Marketing and What it Can do:
Put simply, email marketing is the process of contacting your audience directly to their email inbox. Not only can it increase conversions and provide you with new revenue opportunities but it also allows businesses to develop their relationships with their customers and provide them with valuable info and interesting content.
But what else can it do?:
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- Build and Nurture Relationships: Through personalised messages and communications to your audience.
- Boost Brand Awareness: Through constant contact, trying to keep your brand at the front of your customers minds
- Promote Other Content: Email marketing can be used to promote your other channels such as social media and blog posts
- Generate Leads: By encouraging website visitors to share their email in exchange for valuable content and information relevant to them and common issues they face
Create an Email Marketing Strategy:
Developing a strategy before you start sending is essential if you want your email campaigns to be a success. There are a few key steps to undertake when first starting out.
1. Establish Your Goals:
Identifying what you want to achieve from your email campaign is the first step. Do you want to drive more traffic through to your website, increase sales and revenue, build your brand reputation etc. When establishing your goals be sure to look at the average email statistics for your sector and industry so you have a good idea of what to aim for in terms of open rate, conversion rate and click through rate stats.
2. Build Your List:
Secondly you need to find people to email and separate them into groups of similar demographics that way it will be easier for you to send personalised and more targeted emails.
To start building your list you need a way for prospects to register their interest in your company and subscribe to your email list. This is usually done with Lead Magnets: free pieces of content/ information that businesses offer to their audience in exchange for their email address. Click here for our guide on how to get more subscribers for your email list.
3. Choose What Type of Campaign You Are Going to Use:
There exists multiple different types of email campaigns which all serve different purposes. From Weekly Newsletters to Blog Post Announcements to Abandoned Cart notifications the list goes on. Which type of email you send will depend on the goals that you established in step one for example if your goal is to drive more sales and increase conversions then sending marketing offers in your email campaigns would prompt more people to make a purchase from you.
4. Make Your Schedule:
Schedule how often you are going to contact your email list and stick to it. Consistency is the name of the game when it comes to developing an email marketing strategy and failing to do so can lead to a high unsubscribe rate. By being consistent you are building a relationship of trust with your customer right from the start.
5. Measure Your Results:
The beauty of email marketing is the sheer amount of data that is available to us as marketers. Email marketing is a highly measurable marketing channel and tracking your key metrics is essential if you want to be constantly evolving and improving your content.
All email marketing software provides marketers with tons of data on open rates, click through rates, unsubscribe rates etc. and by measuring your results over time you will be able to better understand what your audience want and what they respond best to. Click here to read our guide on ‘How to Accurately Measure the Effectiveness of Your Email Marketing’.
Wrap Up
While it may seem daunting at first, there are plenty of blogs, articles and information available online that detail everything you could ever need to know about creating an email marketing strategy. The Inboxx “Knowledge Hub” is a great place to start for all your email marketing strategy needs, with over 2 years of educational content available for free.
If you would rather leave this to the professionals then let us cover all this for you. At Inboxx we provide bespoke direct email marketing solutions for businesses, getting you noticed by the people that matter and boosting your revenue.
