How to Develop an Email Marketing Strategy

An e-mail marketing strategy can be thought  of as the digital marketing strategy that an organisation adopts  which combines all of its e-mail marketing goals into one comprehensive plan. It is imperative that such a strategy is drawn from market research and focuses on the right product mix in order to achieve the maximum profit potential and sustain the business.

Strategic approaches for your e-mail marketing strategy

Personalise your messages

When we talk about ‘personalised e-mail marketing’ we don’t mean that you send an individual e-mail to every single subscriber. Personalisation means that you use digital marketing customer data to create a personalised message.

Outside of using the customer’s name here are a few more tips to help you get started with personalisation:

Ask for the right information upfront

Great personalisation starts way before you hit the send button. It all starts with your sign-up form. Without data such as name, company and location you will be very limited with your personalised communication. Remember to only ask for the information you need rather than the data that you want.

Use a real reply-to e-mail address

When you use donotreply@example.com, it takes away the authenticity from the messaging. You want your readers to engage and respond to your campaigns. Using a real reply address will improve credibility and appear more personal.

Use your real e-mail signature

Just like using a real reply-to e-mail address you want to use real contact information within the e-mail. The  best way to do that is to include your contact details in the e-mail signature. Giving your readers the opportunity to contact you or connect with you online is a great way to be personal and build a relationship with them.

Segment your subscribers

The best way to get small business owners to turn up to your event would be to create a segment of people who list themselves as a small business owners who lives within 20 km of your event. With this information on hand, send them an invite by e-mail. The segmentation part is simple and can easily be done through CRM software.

Compare this to sending one e-mail to your entire database with subscribers spread across the country or continent.

Here are some tips on how to get started with segmentation:

Segment by industry

Do you offer services and products to businesses or consumers? Knowing the industry of your subscribers is a great way to segment your e-mail campaigns. For example, a business that sells car parts would engage at a much higher rate with they received e-mail campaigns on car products compared to a business that sells software.

Segment by company size

Segmenting e-mail campaigns by company size or annual revenue is a  great way to increase response rates. A small business that employs five people is not likely ready for the biggest industry conference of the year whereas a business that employs 750 people might be a better fit for this type of messaging.

Segment by sales

Early-stage buyers will not be ready for an aggressive sales pitch or one-on-one demos but they will be more appreciative of receiving white papers that detail industry research. On the other end of the cycle, buyers who are ready to buy will respond well to product webinars or free trial offers.

Send mobile-friendly e-mails

When you send an e-mail to a subscriber who readers their e-mails on their mobile devices, but the e-mail is not optimised for that device, what do you think they’ll do with it? Mostly the readers will unsubscribe from your mailing list or delete the e-mail.

Here are a few tips on how to optimise your e-mails for mobile devices.

Implement responsive e-mail design

Creating a responsive e-mail design means that the user experience is optimised regardless of the device or screen that they use. Most e-mail service providers offer this solution within their e-mail functionalist.

Keep the subject line and pre-header short

The subject linked is crucial. Keep it short so that the readers know exactly what the e-mail topic is about. Don’t let the pre header text (also known as the snippet text) go to waste by using “to view this e-mail in your browser…”. Instead, summarise the e-mail or include a call to action, for example letting customers know about a discount code.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to know more about developing an e-mail strategy? The Digital School of Marketing’s Digital Marketing Course is the best course to help you do this! Fore more information, follow this link. Visit our website to find out about our other online digital marketing courses.