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Email marketing can be a successful, low-cost tool to connect your organization to new prospects and engage with existing customers. Taking a thoughtful approach towards developing successful email marketing strategies will set your organization up for success and help increase sales and brand loyalty.
Why is developing an email marketing strategy important?
It’s estimated that by 2023, there will be more than 347 billion emails sent and received each day. Email is proven to be one of the most effective marketing tactics for:
- Expanding brand awareness
- Increasing visibility for new products and services
- Engaging and retaining repeat customers
- Communicating limited-time promotions or seasonal products
With the average office worker receiving 120 emails per day, you need a strong email marketing strategy to ensure that your email stands out from the crowd.
When determining how to write an email marketing strategy, be sure you have articulated your campaign's objectives and goals. Follow these six approaches to develop an effective inbound email marketing strategy.
1. Email Segmentation
Email segmentation is the process of organizing your customers into smaller, targeted groups based on common characteristics or set criteria.
Why It Works
Segmentation is vital for sending the right message to the right customer at the right time. For example, if you have a group of highly engaged repeat customers and a group of leads who have not purchased previously, by segmenting and sending them different messages, you can be more effective in your messaging and call to action.
Email marketing strategies that include segmented email campaigns typically have an open rate that is 14.32% higher than non-segmented campaigns. They also earn 100.95% higher clickthrough rates as compared to non-segmented email campaigns.
By making effective use of audience segmentation, you can make your message more targeted and specific, increasing customer interest and conversions.
How to Use It
Begin by compiling a list of potential segments that support your business goals and email marketing funnel. That might mean dividing up customers by age group, geographic location, gender, or other demographic factors.
Many email marketing platforms like MailChimp, CampaignMonitor, and Constant Contact offer list management features, including segmentation.
2. Personalized Emails
Personalized email marketing leverages data and information you have obtained from your customers to send hyper-targeted campaigns based on behavior.
Why It Works
Personalized emails have been proven to increase email revenue by as much as 760%. Emails containing personalized subject lines are opened at a 50% higher rate than emails without.
Today’s consumers expect relevant and personalized content and experiences, both online and offline. Sending personalized emails is critical to deepening the relationship with your customers, keeping them engaged and loyal to your brand.
How to Use It
The simplest and most effective way to personalize emails is adding the customer's name to subject lines or within the content of the email. But don’t stop there—data is critical when getting started personalizing emails. Collect information from your customers at each touchpoint with your brand, including email subscription forms and purchase or abandonment history on your website.
Keep in mind though, that manually personalizing emails isn’t sustainable for most businesses. You will need to automate the process by using merge tags through your email marketing platform.
3. Linking to Dedicated Landing Pages
Landing pages are an important part of any effective email marketing strategy. Your email drives interest and awareness, but linking to a good landing page drives leads, conversions, and revenue.
Why It Works
Landing pages are critical for aligning email marketing tactics strategically with your marketing funnel or sales journey. They also help collect data and insights about your customer segments by tracking user behavior and using forms to learn specifics.
Put simply, landing pages are a specialized part of your company website. Linking to your home page won’t do much to guide a potential customer to the next step in the buying journey. Dedicated landing pages, on the other hand, are lead generation tools designed to support marketing campaigns, promotions, or limited-time offers.
These pages should be simple compared to your website at large. They should be easy to read with compelling calls to action, while the rest of your website should have more robust information, supporting the consumer's desire for research, reviews, and product information.
How to Use It
Landing pages are not one size fits all. There are various types of landing pages, including squeeze pages, splash pages, and unsubscribe pages. Find the landing page template that works best for your unique campaign.
Many email marketing platforms offer landing page plugins for web platforms. Some, like MailChimp, even have full integration of email campaigns and landing pages, allowing you to better track analytics and increase conversions.
4. Storytelling
Storytelling has always been at the core of human interaction. It's one of the key ways we build and cultivate relationships with each other—and with trusted brands.
Why It Works
Customer relationship building is one of the primary purposes of developing a robust email marketing strategy, and storytelling is a great way to build those connections naturally.
A strong emotional connection with your customers helps turn them into brand ambassadors or advocates. These are repeat customers for life. Use storytelling in your email marketing content to put a human face to your products and services and bring your brand to life using personal experiences from employees and customers.
How to Use It
Start from within and tell your company’s story. Let your employees talk about their experiences with the brand. Scour through your online reviews and social media comments to find customers who might be interested in talking about their thoughts on the brand.
Once you have a stockpile of raw stories and testimonials, find a good writer to bring these stories to life.
5. Email Newsjacking
Newsjacking is the process of capitalizing on a popular trend or breaking news item to promote your brand or products. It’s essentially a way to let the news cycle do your marketing for you.
Why It Works
Popularized by noted author and strategist David Meerman Scott, newsjacking is a concept that’s been used for years by public relations and content marketing professionals. Breaking news or trending topics happen quickly, propelling people online to research. If your brand can be one of the first sources providing information, your website will get a steady flow of new views.
Savvy marketers understand how to take the concept of newsjacking and immediately react through their marketing channels. By inserting related keywords into email subject lines, social media, and web content, your brand or product will attract consumers seeking more details related to breaking news.
But keep in mind, you have to come across as a reliable and legitimate source in order for newsjacking to work. As Meerman Scott put it, "The best newsjacking is when you or your company have a legitimate tie to the news story. When you do, your comment on the news will be welcome. If not, it is just nonsense."
How to Use It
When done appropriately, newsjacking can put your brand or products in the spotlight as trending topics dominate conversations. A strong newsjacking strategy can promote your brand, products, and services at a minimal cost while connecting to public discourse in a unique way.
Effective newsjacking happens while breaking news is still fresh, so develop an action plan in advance and keep an eye out for relevant stories. Demand Metric developed a how-to guide for Successful Newsjacking, including a step-by-step guide for developing an action plan.
6. Analytics and Optimization
Modern marketing is rooted in thorough data analysis and continuous optimization to determine effectiveness and improve results.
Why It Works
Email marketing can be a powerful tool in your arsenal, offering a return on investment of 122% on average—but that’s only if you base your campaigns on data and established best practices.
Measurements and optimization should not be an afterthought once your emails are deployed. Before creating and sending email campaigns, define your purpose, goals, success metrics, and performance indicators. Standard metrics and performance indicators for email campaigns include:
- Open Rate
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Conversion Rate
- Unsubscribes
Deploying an email won’t do much to grow your business if it doesn’t reach the intended recipients, or if it isn’t opened, read, and acted on. With each email deployment, you can measure and test everything from the most effective subject lines to compelling calls-to-action, and use that knowledge to increase conversion rates in future emails.
How to Use It
The easiest way to begin with email metrics is by monitoring your campaigns through your email marketing platform. Most every platform will have some measurement capabilities and reporting features.
When examining the effectiveness of your campaign, remember your established purpose, goals, and success metrics. Don't focus solely on assessing open rates when the metric that matters for the campaign is the conversion rate. Be flexible and understand that different campaigns have different requirements.
Final Thoughts
The best email marketing strategies can be powerful tools for your organization, but you have to make every email count. You have an average of eight seconds to convince your customer to follow your call to action, so make your content easy to scan and your call-to-action easy to follow through with.
Emails are a great way to entice new and existing customers. Once you’ve got their attention, bring them to your landing page and seal the deal!
This article was written by Compose.ly writer Elizabeth Baidoo.
