If you're on a Galaxy Fold, consider unfolding your phone or viewing it in full screen to best optimize your experience.
Email marketing remains a staple for marketers, even with the emergence of new marketing methods. In fact, email marketing beats social media in terms of gaining new customers. Sixty percent of consumers prefer to subscribe to an email list to receive deals or promotions.
Moreover, email produces the highest ROI among marketing channels, generating an average of $38 for every $1 spent. That’s why most B2C and B2B businesses invest in email marketing plans to generate more sales and raise brand awareness.
An email marketing plan outlines the steps to implement an email marketing strategy. You either prepare an email marketing plan, or you wing it. If you want to see some email marketing home runs, choose the former.
Having a plan gives you a better sense of the problems you need to address, the type of email content you should create, and who your audience is, among other things.
A well-thought-out marketing plan lets you reach the right audience with the right message at the right time. All of which are crucial elements for successful email marketing campaigns.
Email marketing is not just about blasting emails to a list of contacts. Follow the steps below to create an email marketing plan that drives meaningful results.
If you don’t know why you’re sending emails, a disconnect will arise between your email’s content and your subscribers’ needs.
This disconnect can cause your subscribers to either ignore your future emails, unsubscribe, or worse, report you as spam -- all of which can be prevented if you start with a clear goal.
When setting goals, consider who you want to reach, what you want to say to them, and how you’ll hope they respond. Narrow down your goals by asking the following questions:
Learning how to build an email list doesn’t have to be rocket science.
Offering a lead magnet, for example, can do wonders for your list-building efforts. When you offer a lead magnet that provides tons of value, your audience is more likely to share their email addresses.
The most common lead magnets offered are:
Obtaining the email addresses of your prospects is just half the battle, though. If you want to convert your email leads to paying customers, you need to learn how to segment your audience.
Email segmentation means grouping email addresses according to a sub-niche. Some of the most common segmentation ideas are sorting based on gender, age, interest, and behavior. Choose the segmentation type that fits your data and goals.
Segmenting emails allows you to create personalized content since you can tailor it specifically to the sub-niche’s interest. As a result, segmented or targeted campaigns boost click-through and open rates and generate 77% of your overall ROI.
Your content should be relevant and helpful to your subscribers. To know what content works for them, create your marketing materials based on where they are in their buying stage. The structure of your email content is also important.
Use the AIDA model to organize the structure of your email templates. AIDA stands for:
Here’s how it looks when you apply the AIDA model to your email.
Notice how the email template is short and simple, yet it conveys clear information and encourages the reader to take action.
Remember that the best marketing emails focus on giving value to the readers.
Email deliverability is a metric that shows how many of your emails are reaching your recipients’ inboxes. Pay attention to this metric if you want your email marketing campaigns to succeed. After all, if your emails aren’t in your subscribers’ inboxes, they won’t be opened or read.
To optimize your emails for deliverability, consider the following email marketing tips:
Automating your emails lets you scale your campaigns while streamlining your process. Because of the set-it-and-forget-it nature of email automation, your campaigns can run without your constant attention. You just need to do the initial setup, and they'll run 24/7.
For example, use email automation to send welcome emails whenever someone signs up for your newsletters. Automated welcome messages let you onboard new subscribers without manually sending email messages every time someone signs up -- your email automation software will do it all for you.
An email system such as Mailchimp lets you do this easily. The platform has several email automation templates you can choose from.
After selecting a template, start adding your content, audience, and the timing when your email will be sent.
Using email automation saves you a lot of time and headache while making sure you stay on top of your email marketing campaigns.
Also, setting up behavior-based automation, such as birthday greetings, allows you to send highly relevant emails to your contacts at the right time.
Notice how Zalora leverages its subscriber’s birthday by offering a 27% discount to encourage a purchase.
Use email automation to your advantage to provide continuous email communication and drive more engagement.
Maximize the customer lifetime value of your subscribers by creating a high-performing email marketing plan.
Follow the steps mentioned in the guide, and build upon them to create an email marketing plan tailored to your business dynamics.
Our Small Business Expert
We're firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.