How to Create an Email Marketing Plan

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email marketing plan

Email Marketing Plan is very important to every business. Email is the right choice for marketers. Research shows that for every $ 1 money companies invest in email marketing, they will get a $ 21 refund. Emails also become a tool of communication of choice at our very active age to connect with others. More than 3.5 billion people worldwide have email accounts (compared to 1.3 billion Facebook users). So, if you have a message or product to share, email is the best way to do it.

If you already have an email list, you can start sending marketing emails and see what happens. But this is only assumed when you have an email list. This is unlikely to prove successful.

To increase your chances of success, it’s a good idea to develop an email marketing plan. With the plan, you will know who you email, why you send it by email, and what you should include in the email to achieve your marketing goals. You will also have a strategy for developing your email list.

To implement your email marketing plan, email marketing software is required. Why? First, because using the software allows you to comply with anti-spam laws. Secondly, because it will make managing the process of sending emails to lists in bulk is much easier. There are many options and some services are even provided for free as a plan to get started.

Ready to create your email marketing plan? Let’s go that way.

Email Marketing Plan

Step 1: Get to Know Your Goals for Email Marketing

Before starting to develop email lists and send emails, you need to know why you started using email for marketing. The reason you will determine who your email target is, and what type of email you send.

The easiest way to understand that is through an example. Here are some reasons email marketing for businesses and organizations:

  • The purpose of a media company is to generate a page view for their content.
  • Discount retailers make money by selling in bulk. The purpose of their email list is to drive sales.
  • Small local businesses want to develop trusting relationships with potential customers. They want to stay on top of the prospect’s mind, so they are the first choice when customers need their services.
  • A boutique aims to make customers feel special, like being part of something unique.
  • A blogger or writer can use email to build groups of loyal readers.
  • The purpose of the nonprofit community in using email is to raise funds for good work.

Make it clear why you want to start email marketing. Just by knowing your reasons, can you develop an effective strategy?

Step 2: Decide for Who You Wrote

The next step is to decide who your email is. “Everyone” is not a good answer here. The more closely you focus your email on a particular reader, the better you involve all your readers.

Again, let’s look at some examples to help you.

  • Media companies know their ideal readers aged 18-35, men, with higher education. That’s the target readers they’re headed for the content they write. So they understand for whom they write the email and for whom they will develop an email strategy.
  • Audiences from discount retailers are busy moms who want to minimize their household spending budget as much as possible.
  • Small local businesses (say it is a landscape gardening company) target homeowners on the side of a prosperous city.
  • The luxury retailer sells cool watches. So their targets are men who are fashion-conscious trend with middle to upper income.
  • Blogger writes about living frugally. So he’ll target his email to people with tight budgets.
  • The non-profit community research that cures cancer addresses emails for cancer survivors and their families and friends.

The more you understand the target person who is the reason you are writing, the better the email you will write. Email is about building relationships with your readers and that is only possible when you are on the same page.

To get a deep understanding of your readers it helps you create an ideal avatar of readers.

Another way to get to know your readers is to ask them what they want. After you build the list, send an email asking the reader how you can help them best. It will give you many ideas about what to include in your email.

Step 3: Grow Your List

Once you know who you want on your list, you are now getting ready to start developing the list.

What is the best way to grow email lists? Offer incentives for people to sign up.

It can be as simple as telling people what they’ll get when they sign up for you. For example, a non-profit community cancer research may have a registration page on its website that reads, “Sign up for us to receive inspiring stories about people living with cancer and recovering from cancer.” The more specific you write about what people will get when signing up, the more registration you will get. Email marketing plan.

Alternatively, you can offer special incentives to sign up. Here are some examples:

  • Media companies can offer 30 days of free access to exclusive content.
  • Bloggers can offer free e-books or online courses for new customers.
  • Discount retailers can offer an “extra 10% off” discount coupon.

Whatever incentives you offer should be targeted to your ideal readers. This method should be helpful and relevant to them and will make them say “wow!” Everyone respects the privacy of their own email inbox. They will only provide your email address if your offer is very interesting.

Step 4: Develop a Content Strategy

You are building a customer list. The next step is to write to this customer. So, what would you write about your email?

Like the registration incentives you created in the previous step, all your emails should be relevant and valuable to your readers. That’s the only way to turn your customers into loyal readers who always open your email.

Let’s explore our example again to see what kind of content might be created by different businesses.

  • Media companies can share email news updates with links to their latest articles and videos.
  • Discount retailers can use their emails to notify customers about special offers and one-time offers.
  • Gardeners can share gardening tips with their customers. That way, he associates with his customers by being helpful and helpful. The business will always be in the minds of its customers whenever they think about gardening or want to renew their garden.
  • Luxury watches can share stories about celebrities who have been wearing watches from the boutique.
  • Bloggers about frugality can share a set of tips and stories related to personal finance.
  • Nonprofit communities can share stories about the people they help, in addition to asking for donations.

The ideal reader avatar you developed earlier will give you an idea of ​​the type of content your customers want to see.

If you have trouble finding ideas, do a competitor analysis. In other words, go to your competitor’s email list and see what kind of emails they send. What kind of content do they include in their emails? What do they write about? You will get an idea of ​​what works and what does not. Email marketing plan.

The final step in developing your content strategy is to decide whether you want to send plain text or HTML email. HTML emails are rich in images and allow you to create branding by including company logos or other visual brand cues in your email. However, keep in mind that images will sometimes be blocked by your customer email software. Plain text emails do not include graphics. So it looks more like a personal email, so it’s good to build relationships.

Step 5: Set Delivery Schedule

You have decided what type of email you want to send. Now it’s time to fix the email delivery schedule. How often will you send an email?

The answer depends on the time and resources available to create the email and destination you set for your email. Whatever schedule you set, it should involve sending emails on a regular, daily, weekly or monthly basis:

  • Daily email will create a very strong bond with your readers. Writing to your customers every day can be successful if you are a micro business or blogger and you want to develop a loyal group of regular readers. The disadvantage is that many customers will feel overwhelmed by your content that too often and eventually they will unsubscribe.
  • Weekly emails are pretty ordinary, so customers are not surprised to hear from you and they will not feel overwhelmed. If you have the resources to produce a weekly email, it’s good to do.
  • Monthly email is the right choice if you want to make your email very valuable, for example if every email you include a discount promotional code. Then a good bulletin. Since you write with less time frequency than daily or weekly emails, it is a smaller time investment. Email marketing plan. The main issue of monthly email is easily lost and mixed in your busy inbox reader. You will be less likely to be noticed

Step 6: Write Great Email

You have determined how often you will send an email. You have also decided what your email content is about. So now you are ready to write it down.

Do not feel intimidated! Email does not have to be a literary work. Actually, email works better when written in simple everyday language.

The most important part and the part you should use the most for writing is your subject line. Attention to an interesting subject will make the customer want to open your email. Subject lines that are boring and uninspiring will cause your email to be ignored.

The key to writing good emails is to write as if you were working on one person. Do not start your email with “hello everyone” and avoid talking to your customers with a “you” call. It makes your readers not special and they feel they are just one part of many customers. You want your readers to feel like you are writing just for them personally. Email marketing plan

The reader avatars you created earlier will help you remember someone as you write and will help you set the right tone for your email.

After you write your email, do not forget to be corrected again.

Step 7: Submit your Email

You have written an email and checked it for correct spelling and grammar. Do not hold yourself back, because your email is ready to be sent!

Your email does not have to be brilliant. You must send an email as long as you know that your email is good enough. Given all the preparations you have made in determining the reason you sent the email and created the avatar of the reader, your email will be good. So just calm down and send it. Email marketing plan.

Whatever you do, do not hold back your email because it’s not perfect. No email is perfect. Just by sending an email and seeing its performance, you can get the feedback you need to fix your email.

It’s much better to start something, see how it works, then evaluation, rather than waiting for the right idea.

Step 8: See What Works, and Do More About It

As I mentioned earlier, if you are sending marketing emails, you should use email marketing software. Doing so, you will remain on the right side of the law.

More importantly, from a marketing perspective, using email marketing software lets you keep track of the emails you send. You will see how many people are opening your email and how many clicks of links in your email. Use this data to fix your email.

Over time you send those emails, over time you will feel what works and what can be fixed. When you find out what works, do more.

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