An email marketing strategy is a set of procedures that a marketer identifies and follows to achieve their desired marketing goals with email advertising. This reading provides an overview of the sections of an email marketing strategy.
Please note that this reading is only an overview. Many of the sections will be explored in more detail later in the course.
Build your email marketing strategy
There is no one way to create an email marketing strategy. You can record strategy on a paper using a writing utensil. Or, you can use a word processing application like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Instead, it’s more important to include steps commonly found in other successful strategies. The sections of an email marketing strategy include:
- Set your goals
- Choose an email marketing provider
- Build your email marketing subscriber list
- Evaluate brand guidelines
- Determine email frequency
- Determine performance measuring methods
Let’s explore each of these steps one by one.
1. Set your goals
The first step of creating an email marketing strategy is defining your email goals. These goals are often in line with your business goals, meaning your emails will work to achieve the goals that you have for your business.
- Some common goals include:
- Increase brand visibility
- Increase website traffic
- Increase sales
- Acquire new customers
- Build relationships with existing customers
- Increase brand loyalty and loyal customers
Defining your email marketing goal first will help guide you when choosing relevant email options in the upcoming strategy steps.
2. Choose an email marketing provider
An email marketing provider, or email marketing service, is a company that offers email marketing or bulk email services. Choosing the right email marketing provider can significantly impact the success of your email campaign. Some popular email marketing providers are:
- Mailchimp
- HubSpot
- Salesforce
- Constant Contact
When deciding which service is best for your brand, you will need to consider the following factors:
- Cost
- Deliverability
- Reporting
- Email list management
- Template features
3. Build your email marketing subscriber list
Next, determine how you will build and maintain an engaged subscriber list. Building email lists is an ongoing process. To build an email list, you can:
- Create a signup form on your website
- Create an in-person sign up list
- Share a signup form on social media
Once you create a signup list, you’ll be able to divide it into smaller groups based on criteria like interests, location, or purchase history, in a process known as segmentation. This will help you target specific groups for specific goals.
4. Evaluate brand guidelines
When a business wants to establish a distinctive brand identity, they often create a list of rules and standards that convey how their brand should be represented. These rules are the company’s brand guidelines and they apply to all content produced by the company, including emails.
In your email marketing strategy, identify specific brand guidelines that will be relevant to your email marketing campaigns. These guidelines can include the following:
- Fonts
- Colors
- Layouts
- Illustrations
- Logos
If your email marketing service allows you to create templates for your emails, you can apply specific guideline details for all your brand’s outgoing emails for a consistent brand identity.
5. Determine email frequency
Stating how often your emails will be shared will help you plan out how often your emails will reach your subscribers. Later in the course, you will learn more about how to establish email frequency and how to create a schedule for sending emails.
6. Determine performance measuring methods
When you begin your email marketing campaigns, you’ll need to analyze the success of your campaigns. The tools you’ll use are based on your available resources. Most email marketing providers offer basic reporting that tracks essential metrics like how many of your emails were opened, unsubscribers, and click through rate (CTR). Some providers also monitor bounce rate, which is the percentage of emails that have not successfully reached recipients. You can also run a deliverability check that determines if your emails are getting to their intended recipients.
Be sure to state in your email marketing strategy which of these tools will be most effective for analyzing your campaign success. Also be sure to state when you plan to collect and evaluate these performance measuring methods.
Key takeaways
Outlining the steps and procedures of an email marketing strategy can help you develop a successful, organized, and well-thought email marketing campaign. These steps will guide you as you strive to create emails that achieve your marketing goals.