Email marketing can be an incredibly effective way to reach your target audience. With email open rates averaging around 20% and click-through rates around 2-3%, it provides a high return on investment compared to other marketing channels.
However, in order to see success with your email marketing campaigns, you need to have a solid strategy in place. Your email marketing strategy provides a roadmap for creating, sending and optimizing your campaigns over time.
In this article, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step guide to creating an effective email marketing campaign strategy.
Set Your Goals and Objectives
The first step in developing your email marketing strategy is to clearly define your goals and objectives. Having clear goals will help inform all of your subsequent strategy decisions and give you benchmarks for measuring success.
Typical email marketing goals include:
– Generate leads
– Drive sales
– Increase brand awareness
– Engage current customers
– Upsell/cross-sell existing customers
– Drive website traffic
– Build loyalty
As you define your goals, make sure they are SMART:
– Specific
– Measurable
– Achievable
– Relevant
– Time-bound
For example, a SMART goal might be: “Generate 50 new leads through email campaigns in the next 3 months.”
Be as specific as possible and break down larger goals into smaller, measurable objectives. This will help you track progress and optimize your strategy over time.
Research Your Target Audience
The success of your email marketing relies heavily on how well you know your audience. Take time to research your target demographics and buyer personas before creating your campaigns.
Important things to research include:
– Demographic information: age, gender, location, income level, education, occupation, etc.
– Psychographic profile: values, attitudes, interests, hobbies, pain points, etc.
– Buying habits: where they are in the buyer’s journey, preferred channels, objections, motivations, etc.
– Email preferences: open rates, click rates, spam complaints, unsubscribes, etc.
There are a number of ways to gather this information, including:
– Customer surveys and interviews
– Analytics data from your email service provider
– Third-party data sources
– Social media monitoring
– Keyword research
– Competitive analysis
Having detailed audience profiles will allow you to create highly-targeted, relevant email campaigns. Make sure to document your research findings to reference as you execute your strategy.
Define Your Content Strategy
The content you share through your email campaigns is core to your strategy. You need to determine what types of content you will send to achieve your goals.
Important content strategy considerations include:
– Education-focused content: ebooks, whitepapers, guides, tip sheets, etc.
– Promotional content: discounts, coupons, contests, product announcements, etc.
– Brand-building content: newsletters, blog digests, subscriber surveys, etc.
– Lead nurturing content: relevant follow-ups for prospects based on intent
– Customer win-back content: special offers for inactive email subscribers
Map out a content calendar to plan what types of content you will send and when. This will help ensure you are sending a good mix of content tailored to your audience throughout the year.
Identify the key topics that resonate most with your audience based on your research. Then develop a library of branded assets and repurposed content from your blog, social media, website, etc.
Leverage tools like A/B testing to optimize your content over time. Pay attention to open and click-through rates to see which message and content types perform best.
Choose Your Email Design
You only have a few seconds to capture your subscribers’ attention, so the design and layout of your emails is critical.
Important design elements include:
– Subject line: Catchy, personalized, urgency/benefit focused, 6-10 words
– Preheader text: Summary of value prop and call to action, visible on inbox view
– Logo: Instant brand recognition
– Headers/footers: Contact info, social media links, address, copyright, etc.
– Images: Relevant, high-quality, with clear call-to-action
– Copy: Brief, scannable paragraphs and bullet points
– Links: Obvious calls-to-action and link formatting
– Layout: Organized content with white space, single column width 600px
– Mobile optimization: Testing on all devices and clients
Stick to a consistent brand style across all of your campaigns. Use your brand colors, fonts, tone of voice, and imagery to stand out.
Focus on one clear call-to-action per email to guide your audience. Make sure the value proposition and CTA are obvious.
Test different layouts, formats, lengths, etc. to see what resonates most with your subscribers. Pay attention to engagement metrics to optimize continually.
Segment and Personalize
One of the biggest advantages of email marketing is the ability to segment and personalize content for different types of subscribers.
Ways to segment your audience can include:
– Demographics: Age, gender, location, job title, company size
– Psychographics: Interests, values, personalities
– Behaviors: Engagement, past purchases, browsing history
– Buyer’s journey stage: Awareness, consideration, decision
Tools like customer relationship management (CRM) software and email service providers make it easy to tag subscribers and sort them into different segments.
Personalization tactics can include:
– First name/last name merge tags
– Location-based content
– Behavioral triggers: Browse abandonment, purchase anniversary
– Subject line personalization: Open rate, name, purchase history
– Dynamic content blocks: Images, text, links
– Preferences and interests
Personalized, well-timed emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. Use segmentation and personalization to provide a tailored experience.
Automate Your Campaigns
Marketing automation enables you to streamline and scale your email efforts. With automation, you can set up triggers to send contextual messages without manual effort.
Types of campaigns to automate include:
– Welcome series: Onboard new subscribers
– Lead nurturing: Send content based on actions and intent
– Retargeting: Win back inactive email subscribers
– Behavioral triggers: Cart abandonment, browsed product
– Event-based: Purchase anniversary, birthday
– Support flows: Tips for new users, troubleshooting
– Newsletters: Schedule and batch deliver at optimal times
Start with one or two keyworkflows, then expand over time. Watch your real-time reporting dashboards to continually optimize.
Integrate With Your Tech Stack
Don’t think of your email campaigns in isolation. To maximize results, integrate your email efforts with the rest of your marketing technology stack.
Important integrations include:
– Website and blog: Install tracking pixels, link campaigns to site content
– CRM: Sync subscriber data, track engagement
– E-commerce platform: Trigger campaigns based on purchase behavior
– Social media: Promote campaigns and repurpose content
– Analytics: Connect email data to web analytics for full-funnel reporting
– Marketing automation: Use workflows to move subscribers between platforms
– Surveys: Send pre/post-campaign surveys to capture feedback
– Landing pages: Direct email links to tailored landing experiences
This creates a seamless, consistent experience across channels and helps unify your data.
Analyze and Optimize Performance
The key to email success is continually testing and optimizing based on data. Make reporting and analytics a priority from day one.
KPIs to track include:
Metric | Benchmark |
Open rate | 15-25% |
Click-through rate | 2-5% |
Conversion rate | Depends on goal |
Bounce rate | Under 5% |
List growth rate | 5-10% per month |
Unsubscribe rate | Under 0.2% per campaign |
Spam complaints | Zero |
Track engagement by segment, content type, send time, subject line, design, and other factors. Look for trends to identify optimization opportunities.
Make incremental changes to see if results improve. Never stop testing and improving your campaigns. Over time, you will determine what resonates most with your subscribers.
Stay Compliant With Rules and Regulations
With email marketing, it’s important to stay compliant with anti-spam laws like the CAN-SPAM Act. Failure to follow regulations could result in hefty fines or blocked sending abilities.
Here are key rules to follow:
– Honor opt-out requests immediately
– Send to only direct consent-based lists
– Include physical mailing address
– Use accurate subject lines and sender info
– Identify commercial messages as advertisements
– Monitor and report on bounce rates
Never purchase email lists, use deceptive practices, or send unwanted messages. Maintain strict permission protocols and you can avoid issues.
Refine and Expand Your Strategy
Your email marketing strategy should be constantly evolving based on results. Set aside time every quarter to analyze performance and refine your approach.
Ways to expand your strategy over time include:
– Adding new segments and personas
– Increasing automation and personalization
– Developing more content types
– Testing additional design templates
– Integrating new technologies
– Sending higher frequency messages
– Expanding to multiple send days and times
Don’t get complacent. Leverage what works but always look for areas to improve and grow your email program. The most successful brands continually refine and expand their strategies.
Conclusion
Developing a strong email marketing strategy takes effort up front but pays off exponentially. Start by setting clear goals, researching your audience, and planning compelling content. Optimize design, personalization, automation, integrations, and reporting to execute campaigns that deliver results. Refine and expand your approach over time. With a thoughtful strategy and commitment to continual optimization, email marketing can be one of your most effective channels for engaging and converting subscribers.