Email Marketing strategy
Target – relevance – report - follow up
These are the four essentials of email marketing. Without building a strategy around these elements you will be wasting a lot of time.
It is essential to have a cohesive strategy when undertaking an email marketing campaign. You need to consider the following elements and resource them accordingly:
- your target audience – this should be clearly defined with a solid understanding of their needs and what motivates them
- your mailing list – the ideal mailing list is one that you have a one-to-one relationship with and where the recipients have agreed to accept mailings and communications from you.
- what your regular mailings are going to be about – ensure that you choose targeted and appropriate news stories, case studies and product features that are relevant to your target audience
- target your content to your audience(s) - it is much better to have several smaller targeted mailing lists than one large one. It is more work to manage but will get much better results
Themes to consider when writing content for email newsletters
- Relevant case studies or “success stories” to your target audience. Choose recent projects which have worked well within your target audience. Where you have delivered a stunning results or overcome a problem. Illustrate to your audience succinctly that you really understand them and their needs.
- Relevant and unique news that will interest your target audience. Things you have been involved in that are newsworthy that increases/reinforces your standing in the eyes of your audience.
- Profile of a relevant product or product range. Treat a product/range as a news item. Bring it to life with specific details about it, who uses it and its specific benefits.
And above all keep it Brief, keep it relevant, keep it interesting.
Record, analyse and act
The greatest thing about online marketing is the ability to really understand what your target audience are interested in and to respond appropriately. So don’t waste your efforts, make sure you record, analyse and act upon this information. Define what you want your audience to do and have clear calls to action within your marketing emails.
Use a good product which records all user interactions with your mailings so you can respond accordingly. You need to know who your active readers are i.e. those that bother to open your email, and more importantly who clicks through to your site.
You want to segment your active readers by their actions and then respond with the appropriate follow up action.
