How to Create a Successful Email Marketing Strategy
Email is one of the best channels for marketing. It's relatively low cost and people feel as if promotions by email are less intrusive. In order to reach people effectively, you need to know how to create a successful email marketing strategy that will get them to click and take action.
You could send out emails without a strategy, however, you probably won't get great results and might give up too early. We've developed some tips to help you create a winning email marketing strategy.
9 Tips For Creating a Successful Email Marketing Strategy
Create Goals
Define your goals and identify the action that you want subscribers to take. You need to know what you're aiming for before you can decide on a strategy. Set clear objectives such as sales, appointments, donations, etc.
You need to clearly define what email marketing success looks like for your marketing strategy before you waste time building your list and sending emails.
Build Your Email List, Don't Buy It
Creating your own list is always better than buying one. Purchased lists can be quite expensive and you run the risk of getting spam complaints, sending to fake email addresses, and getting your email domain blacklisted.
Make sure you build your list up with people who want to hear your message.
Segment Your Email Lists
Segments are smaller groups of your list that share a common interest. You might have a separate segment for each product or service you offer, by source, or by how engaged they are with your email campaign.
It's recommended that you send different messages to different segments of your list.
Create Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines
You have a few seconds to grab your customer's attention. Subject lines are what people use to decide if they're interested in your email or not.
Personalization of email subject lines, for example, has been proven to increase open rates. On the other hand, using spammy words like "free" or long subject lines will lower your email open rates.
Write For Your Audience
Write messages that will be valuable and appealing to your audience. Check out what your subscribers are interested in, do they need something updated?
You should also keep in mind that the more engaging and tailored your message is, the more successful your campaign will be.
Optimize Your Emails For Mobile Devices
In order for your email to be successful, it needs to look great on mobile devices. In fact, email is viewed more on mobile devices than desktop devices these days.
Make sure your email takes up the full screen and looks great on all screen sizes. Also, avoid long paragraphs as they can be more difficult to read on mobile devices.
Create a Template
It's already a difficult task to consistently create content. Creating a template for the overall structure of your emails will help with developing content quickly and maintain a consistent flow and feel that you audience will enjoy.
A/B Test Your Emails
A/B test everything! Subject lines, call-to-actions, content, segments, time of day, time of the week, you should be testing everything. Split testing is great for figuring out what exactly your audience will respond positively to. It's especially important to use split testing when you're not achieving your desired goals.
Schedule Your Emails
It's best to ensure that your emails go out at the same time every day. This will create some predictability in your emails so your audience knows when to look for it. If you are delivering valuable content, your subscribers will be eager to consume it.
Creating a successful email marketing strategy is not difficult, however, it takes work and research. Working with an email marketing agency can help you define your strategy and reach more customers and prospects by email.