How To Create A Lucrative Email Marketing Strategy

Sitting with a bunch of email addresses from customers who’d really like to hear from you from time to time? Contrary to what many might think, email marketing is far from dead and buried. In fact, some digital marketers are boosting returns on investments of up to 70 to 1! In other words, for some professional email marketers, they garner a whopping $70 for every $1 they spend. Email is still going to be an important marketing and advertising tool in 2021, so let’s have a closer look at how you can craft a winning email marketing strategy for your business!

Establish Your Goals

First things first: why are you looking at creating an email marketing strategy? Are you hoping to remind your past customers and suppliers that you’re still in business? Maybe you have a new range of products that you’d like to start promoting? The purpose behind your marketing efforts will influence the people you will target, the design you’ll use, the content you’ll include, etc. Write down, in one sentence, what the over-arching purpose of your email marketing campaign will be.

Ensure Your Compliance

Whether you have an existing list of email addresses or you’re going to build a list from scratch, modern data privacy regulations must be adhered to. The GDPR and, in South Africa, POPI Act have now made it law that brands make their email marketing customers privy to the way their information is being stored, the information they can expect to receive, and the process of unsubscribing from the email list. An important part of creating a winning email strategy is to ensure that your campaign will comply with international data regulations.

Start Building Your Lists

Your email can be the most gorgeous thing anyone has ever seen, but if you have no email addresses to send it to – nobody’s going to see it. An important phase of an email marketing strategy is sourcing the mailing addresses that will be added to your database. Do this with a raffle, an in-store competition, or ask customers directly if they’d like to stay in email contact with the brand. Once you have a list of email addresses (and all recipients have opted into receiving your email marketing), the next step is to segment them into categories (suppliers, customers, staff).

Plan Your Content

Step three is to establish a visually-appealing email template. Web designers can develop simple HTML email templates that will need to be edited by coders, or you can use free bulk email services like Mailchimp to simply drag and drop stunning email templates within minutes. Once there’s a template that’s good to go, next is to finalise the content you’re going to share as part of your first email marketing message. Be sure to add content variety, like linking to your website as well as one or two third-party sites, and include multi-media like video to spice up the design.

Schedule Your Emails

Just like that, your compliant email marketing campaign is ready to go. All that remains to be done is to make the decision about when the email should be sent out. There’s much research around this topic of best times to send out marketing content, and brands that find the golden recipe usually do so through trial and error. Avoid sending your email marketing messages when you know most people won’t be checking their emails, like after 11 pm and before 5 am. Also, there’s a slim chance people will read or respond over the weekends.

In the age of strict data regulations, thanks to progressive legislation like the GDPR and South Africa’s own POPI act, creating a successful email marketing campaign is more challenging than most think. However, as we can see above, email marketing can really pay off when done right.

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