How to Organize An Effective Email Marketing Strategy (Template)

How to Organize An Effective Email Marketing Strategy (Template) Managing email marketing successfully isnt easy especially when you have multiple email initiatives going at once. The value of email marketing is undeniable, so its not surprising that many departments within your organization want to leverage the platform. This results in lots of moving pieces to consider and many stakeholders to please. It also increases the chances of accidentally sending multiple emails to the same person in one day. (Speaking from personal experience the fallout of this isnt pretty.) Here are just a few pieces of the puzzle you have to consider Managing your ever-growing subscriber list. Overseeing the design and copy of every email. Scheduling delivery times. A/B testing. Analyzing results. Thats just scratching the surface. One thing is clear, if youre going to be successful at email marketing, you need a well-planned marketing strategy in place. One that clearly establishes goals, and lays out the roadmap to achieve them. Something that can guide your team toward success. And thats exactly what youll get from this post. Heres how to plan your entire #email #marketing strategy via @Download Your Email Marketing Strategy Template Before you continue reading, download your email marketing strategy template. This easy to use PowerPoint will help you document your plan and give the rest of your email team something to refer back to when they have questions. If you're new to , it's the only marketing suite to manage every facet of your marketing. It even integrates with popular email marketing services giving you the ultimate visibility into your email strategy, so you'll never send multiple emails to the same person in one day again. With Email Marketing from , you can: Seamlessly integrate with your favorite email marketing platform. Email platforms are powerful, and you've grown to know and love yours, so why give it up? integrates with many preferred platforms so your email marketing is no longer disjointed from the rest of your marketing initiatives. Write click-worthy email subject lines...every time. ’s awesome Email Subject Line Tester is built right in so you can optimize and perfect every subject line to drive more  opens, more  clicks, and more conversions. Get full visibility into your ENTIRE  marketing strategy. Disjointed marketing content (and constantly jumping from screen to screen) is the worst. With Email Marketing from , all your email campaigns live on your single marketing calendar, giving you ultimate visibility into your marketing strategy and individual initiatives. Create Your Own Email Marketing Strategy in 11 Steps Creating an email marketing strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. The following eleven steps will help you plan your work and work your plan in no time. Table of Contents: Choose Your Email Marketing Tools Identify Your Target Audience Choose List-Building Tactics Create Your Email List Segments Create Email Sending Schedule Define Your Email Marketing Goals Decide Which Types of Emails to Send Formatting Your Email Content How To Optimize Your Emails What A/B Tests Will You Run Reporting Step One: Choose Your Tools Finding the right tools is the first step in your strategy. A lot of these platforms are super powerful and can help you organize and send your emails at the drop of a hat. Email Marketing Tools Some common email marketing tools that you might consider using are: MailChimp Campaign Monitor Constant Contact ActiveCampaign This is a shortlist in a sea of other email tools you could use. Find the tool that fits your team based on what you want to accomplish with your email marketing. Recommended Reading The Best Free Email Marketing Software Tools You Should Use Marketing Automation Tools You might not want to stop at a simple email marketing tool. You may also consider adding a marketing automation tool to your list. Marketing automation makes it easy for you to follow up with customers and send the right email at the right time to subscribers based on how they are interacting with your website. Some email marketing platforms have basic marketing automation features built-in like the option to send birthday email messages automatically, etc. It's worth taking some time to figure out the depths of marketing automation you need and your bandwidth for maintaining automation initiatives. These activities can take a big chunk of time to manage. Potential automation tools to add to your list are: Autopilot:  Autopilot makes it easy to plan out journeys and triggers that send your subscribers emails based on how they interact with your website. Userfox:  Userfox is a small email-focused automation tool that sends emails to subscribers based on events that you put into the system. Userfox was bought by the Adroll Group in 2014. HubSpot:  Hubspot doesn’t have as much email automation functionality as the other two on this list, but it is suited for companies who want to control multiple aspects from one tool. Marketo:  Is a powerful marketing automation tool that is most suitable for enterprise-level marketers. Pardot:  Is a full solution that helps marketers create meaningful connections, generate more pipeline, and empower sales to close more deals. The marketing automation option fits will if you use Salesforce as your CRM. Once you have your tools, add them to the first slide in your email marketing strategy template: Action Items: Research email marketing tools. Compare which ones will work best for your marketing team. Add them to your strategy template.Step Two: Identify Your Target Audience Once you have your tools selected you to need to focus on building your email subscriber list. The first step to build your email list is to identify your target audience. As a refresher: Your target audience is the ideal customer you want to attract to your product or service through your marketing efforts. So how can you find your target audience? First, answer the following questions: Who are our current best customers? What qualities do they have in common? What problem are they experiencing that has our customers search for a solution like our product or service? Why did they purchase our product or service? What did we provide for our customers that our competition didn’t? Is your email marketing strategy focused on your target audience?Using those answers format, your target audience statement with the following template: {Insert your company} creates content to attract {insert target audience} so they can {insert desired outcome} better. Record your target audience demographics and statement in your template. Recommended Reading: How To Find Your Target Audience With A Marketing Persona Step Three: Create Tactics To Use To Get Your Audience To Opt-In To Your Email List Now that you know who your target audience is you can begin to brainstorm tactics that will attract them and convince them to sign up and join your email list. Here are just a few ideas to get you started. Give Them Something Valuable In Return One of the most common ways to get your audience to join your email subscriber list is to gate content upgrades behind an opt-in form. What is valuable to your customers? A downloadable template or ebook that shows them how to solve a problem or answer a question they might be having. If you gate something that doesn’t provide something of value you might end up losing that subscriber. Recommended Reading: Conquer Your Inbound Marketing Strategy with this Process (+ 4 Templates) Go For The Direct Ask Another way to gain subscribers is to go for the direct ask. Explain to them why they should opt into your email list and entice them with personalized information like this pop up from Fargo 3D Printing. Gathering information like this will also help you segment your list. (More on that in a bit): Here's another pop-up example from Nanit encouraging visitors to signup for their newsletter. The company asks for the ages of the visitor's children, which would indicate the company does some segmenting based on developmental stages of the child's age. Use the Header And Footer of Your Website Another place you can put an email opt-in button is on your website’s header and footer. Why not meet your audience halfway and make it easy to remind them that they can get more information about your products by joining your email list? Take a look at this example from Ulta: Here's another example from Michael Hyatt: And another from British Clothing Company, Boohoo. How To Segment Your Email List We mentioned earlier in this section that you can segment your email list. What does that mean and how can that help you? Here's a quick and dirty email segmentation definition: The process of grouping like individuals on an email list based on their behavior or characteristics to send specifically targeted emails that address that particular group of users needs or problems. You can just blast out your emails to everyone on your list and hope that it resonates with someone and convince them to convert. However, in today’s day in age, we can use data and information to go further and serve content to the right people at the right time to help guide them through your marketing funnel. In fact, segmenting your list can have a positive effect on your email list. MailChimp conducted an internal study  and found that segmented campaigns had: 14.31% higher open rates. 100.95% more clicks. 9.37% lower unsubscribe rates than their non-segmented campaigns. You can segment your list  based on a variety of things, including: Company size. Location. Activity on your website. How long they’ve been on your email list. In order to accurately segment your list, you need to gather this data about your customers when they first sign up. So add options for subscribers to choose from before they complete their sign up. List potential ways your team will try and grow your email list in your template as well as your email list segments. Action Items: Brainstorm email list growth strategies. Record strategies in your template. Update strategies every three months based on what’s working well and what isn’t. List out what criteria you will segment your list by. Step Four: Choose the Types of Emails to Send There are many different types of email that you can send to your list. You can choose one or change it up based on the various segments you have in your list. Here are three different types of emails to get started with. Newsletters Newsletters are a popular email format. They come to your subscriber’s inbox at the same time at recurring intervals. They allow you to show them a variety of content and information your subscribers might have missed if they haven’t visited your website lately. According to Hubspot,  successful email newsletters contain 90% educational content and 10% product or promotional content. The same post from Hubspot says newsletters should contain a single theme or idea. That way you can prevent yourself from randomly throwing content into your newsletter just to get it out there. You might even send out different newsletters on different topics based on who you’re sending each newsletter to on your list. So what does an excellent newsletter look like? Take this example from The Skimm: Photo from Hubspot The Skimm newsletter  is specific in the fact that it rounds up the latest news from the day before and quickly summarizes it for readers. It provides the benefit of not having to read long news stories and allows subscribers to quickly catch up on the news from the day before.