How to design a successful email marketing strategy?

 How to design a successful email marketing strategy?-Overview

Would you know how to design  an email marketing strategy   from scratch ?

Almost all marketers are clear that email marketing is essential within a  digital marketing plan , since it is one of the most effective and profitable channels and can help us achieve multiple objectives. But when it comes to defining how exactly we are going to achieve those goals, things get complicated.

In order not to start your house on the roof and end up wasting valuable time and resources, you need an  email marketing strategy  that can address all this complexity. Not sure where to start? In this article I will tell you the  5 essential elements of a successful strategy, 4 examples of brands and what we can learn from them and 7 tricks to optimize your campaigns . Go for it!

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The 5 ingredients of a good email marketing strategy

1) Clearly define your goals

Before planning any action, there is a question you need to ask yourself: what exactly do you want to achieve with your  email marketing strategy ?

The  marketing  email can help achieve many goals, but can not do everything at once. If you want to get good results, you need to be focused. Therefore, the first step is to sit down and think about  what you want to use email marketing for:

Create a new loyalty channel?

Increase the sales of a specific product range through your  newsletter ?

Get more subscribers to your promotional emails?

Remember that for an objective to be truly functional, you must clearly specify a quantifiable value and establish a time frame to achieve it: "increase sales of cosmetic products by 20% in the next six months."

Along with defining objectives, it is also important to clearly consider  what our target is . Here we can rely on tools such as the  buyer persona , a semi-fictional description of our ideal client that helps us better guide recruitment initiatives.

2) Think about how you are going to get subscribers

And speaking of recruitment, any  email marketing strategy  must be supported by a good database. Therefore, the acquisition of subscribers is a fundamental ingredient to succeed with your email marketing.

To synthesize your  recruitment strategy  properly, my recommendation is that you try to answer these three questions:

Who are you talking to?  

As we saw in the previous section, the buyer persona can help us guide our marketing. But the reality can be much more complex: many times we will find that we need to have databases segmented by objectives (first conversion versus loyalty, for example) or by types of consumer (parents with children from X to X age). Based on that, we will structure our database so that the right messages reach the right people.

What are you going to offer them?  

To be part of your database, users have to voluntarily share their personal information (at a minimum, they should leave you their email address). In exchange for this valuable data, the brand must offer them some kind of incentive. Sometimes, it may be enough to explain the benefits they are going to get from your newsletter, but it may also be necessary to reinforce this incentive through exclusive discounts or content that is valuable to them (such as the typical "leave us your data and download free our ebook ").

How are you going to capture them? 

Here we will pay attention to topics such as form design and calls to action. The idea is to design a fluid, attractive user experience with as few obstacles as possible.

3) Design a step-by-step plan

With all the bases clear, the time has come to get down to work and think about what exactly we are going to do to achieve the objectives that we have set.

To begin, we need to think  about short, medium and long term email marketing strategies . For example:

Offer free trials of a new product in exchange for sharing the launch on social media and using the newsletter to communicate it.

Design special offers just for subscribers.

Regularly send exclusive content that reinforces the link with the brand.

Inform about the events that take place near the place where the user lives and give him the opportunity to sign up for them from his email.

The chosen strategy will determine the  type of content  that our newsletter should include, from the latest news to discount coupons. Obviously this content will be updated according to the news, but it is always useful to have predesigned templates that are consistent with the image of the brand in the rest of the channels. We must not forget the importance of interactive elements, animations,  GIFs  and others, but always maintaining visibility on different devices.

Within this planning of our email marketing strategy, we also need to define the  frequency  with which we will send content to users, seeking a balance between being present on a regular basis and not being annoying.

Finally, we will design a   medium-term email marketing calendar . For this, we have to make the decision about  when to send the emails , that is, the most appropriate day of the week and time. There are different studies that guide us on the moments with the highest opening and conversion rates, but above all we must consider what makes sense for our brand and for the email content. For example, we may be interested in reaching users when they are planning their activities for the weekend or on the contrary, offering them help to start their work week.

4) Choose an email marketing tool

Today, to carry out an  email marketing strategy it  is essential to have a  tool  that helps us manage the entire process. Email marketing solutions have multiple benefits, such as:

Systematize the measurement of campaigns . 

You will know at all times how many emails have been sent, the opening rate, the conversion rate and other information that is most useful to evaluate the success of your strategy.

Facilitate the design of emails . 

These types of tools usually have a lot of pre-designed templates and even image libraries, so even small businesses can easily design professional-looking emails.

Keep our database organized , for example, with different lists depending on the segmentation that we have decided.

Automate and personalize email marketing.

 It is possible to schedule shipments to take place automatically at a specific day and time (even while you're on vacation!), Customize the content based on the information we have about the user and much more.

Easily scale our marketing . 

Many email marketing tools have free versions, which have basic but sufficient functionalities and allow you to send emails to a few thousand subscribers. From there, the sky is the limit: it is very easy to change plans and expand our email marketing to infinity and beyond.

From small free solutions to very complex tools for large companies, there are all kinds of programs on the market that can suit your needs. These are my favorites:

HubSpot . 

More than an exclusive email marketing tool, HubSpot is an integrated marketing solution that allows us to obtain a lot of information about what is happening with our campaigns.

MailChimp . 

One of the classics of email marketing, with a free version that allows you to create lists of up to 2,000 subscribers and send up to 12,000 shipments per month.

Sendlane . 

Although much less known than the previous ones, I find it very interesting for email marketing strategies focused on sales, since its analytics allow you to track each conversion and link it to a specific email. In this way, you can know exactly how much you have earned with each campaign.

5) Define your metrics

Last but not least, you have to know at all times how you are going to measure the success of your email marketing strategy. Only then can you see what is working and what is not, and make the necessary changes to correct the course.

The metrics selected will depend on the objective that we have selected in the beginning. The idea is that the objective and the variable to be measured are clearly related, so that it works as a  key performance indicator or KPI.  Secondarily, we can also rely on other metrics that help us know what is happening.

For example, if we are focusing on the recruitment phase, we will have goals such as the increase in subscribers or the unsubscribe rate. In the shipping phase we will take a look at the open and click rates, and if we have goals related to sales and lead generation, the most important thing will be the conversion rates. 

Course: How to improve your email marketing strategy

4 examples of successful email marketing strategies

1) Argos

Argos, a British distribution company, has seen  all kinds of changes over the years . But one thing has remained constant: his commitment to send no less than  one daily email to millions of subscribers .

How to design a successful email marketing strategy

For many brands, an email each day can seem excessive and run the risk of overwhelming users. But what we can learn from this brand is that consistency is very important, as it creates consumer habits among users and also helps to consistently compare the results of our email marketing strategy.

How to design a successful email marketing strategy

Of course, you should never sacrifice quality in exchange for frequency. Once again, here Argos is a great example thanks to its dynamic and seasonal emails, for example, showing animations with fitness products during the first weeks of the New Year.

2) Jack Willis

The  carts abandoned  are one of the most common problems of ecommerce. In fact, according to a Salecycle study  , 75.6% of online purchases end up being abandoned. Therefore, it is worth developing a strategy aimed at recovering these users and getting them to convert.

How to design a successful email marketing strategy

Jack Willis, a fashion brand, has refined their abandoned cart emails into a role model. These are the keys to your success:

A standard template with images of abandoned purchases and calls to action clearly visible.

Personalized texts to give the email a more human touch and improve the user experience.

An added incentive to checkout: free shipping on abandoned items.

A message at the end of the email promoting discounted items, to invite the user to return to the web and stimulate cross-selling opportunities.

How to design a successful email marketing strategy 

3) eBay

eBay is an  example of good practice  in terms of email marketing strategy.

How to design a successful email marketing strategy

Take note and sign up these tips:

A design  consistent  with the website. It is proven that users remember brands better when they have a consistent design across all channels. Here consistency doesn't just apply to buttons, colors, and fonts, but even emails have a top menu very similar to eBay's home page.

clear layout, with a   clearly established hierarchy that draws attention to the title. So much so, that the call-to-action button is transparent.

A   well-defined strategy and objectives . The emails are focused on attracting users to the page and making them take a specific action (for example, signing up for discount alerts). 

How to design a successful email marketing strategy

4) Allbirds

Finally, we are going to see an example of how to use the email marketing strategy to  reinforce the image and values ​​of a brand : Allbirds electronic tickets.

How to design a successful email marketing strategy

Allbirds is a certified organic brand, so it makes sense for them to bet on reducing their environmental impact and clearly show this commitment to users. One of the ways to achieve this has been to suppress paper receipts and opt instead to send an electronic invoice to customers by email.

In addition to being a greener option, electronic receipts help keep track of transactions and open a new way to communicate with customers and bring them the latest promotions and discounts. All are advantages!

7 tips to improve your email marketing strategy

To finish, we are going to see a series of very simple tips that can help you optimize your email marketing strategy and improve your results:

1.  Include social proof in your emails . 

Social proof is a simple psychological trick that consists of showing your product through real people, for example, testimonials from satisfied users or photos of your customers wearing your clothes. Including this type of content in your email marketing strategy will help you to approach users in a more human way and reinforce transparency and trust.

2.  Don't stop testing . 

Subjects, fonts, colors, size of images ... Emails have a lot of elements that can be optimized, so they are a perfect territory to do  A / B tests . For the best results, pretest a significant percentage of your audience (typically 5-20% of subscribers) and then submit the winning version to the rest of your database.

3.  Facilitates casualties . 

Although it may seem paradoxical, making it easy for users to unsubscribe without complications benefits you in the long run. On the one hand, you want your database to be of quality and only have subscribers who are really interested in your content. On the other hand, facilitating unsubscriptions means that users do not end up marking you as spam, which could negatively affect your reputation as a sender.

4.  Personalize, personalize, personalize .

 Personalization starts with details as simple as including users' names in subjects, but can be extremely complex. The more you manage to adjust to each individual user, the greater the chances that your email marketing strategy will achieve the objectives you are looking for.

5.  Start a  conversation .

 Many times email marketing is thought of as a one-way channel, in which the brand broadcasts and the user receives. But there's no reason not to encourage interactivity and get good subscriber feedback. Bet on interactive content and calls to action and make it very clear to users how they can get in touch with you.

6.  Take maximum care of  CTAs .

If there is one aspect that can radically change the results of your email marketing strategy with minimal changes, it is the calls to action. This is an element that is worth spending time and investigating as much as possible through A / B or multiversion tests.

7.  Simplify . 

Yes, it is important that the emails are cared for and have a design according to the brand's branding, but they are not a copy of your website. Keep in mind that they are often displayed on small screens and reading emails is combined with other tasks. Therefore, the ideal is that each email has a single, very clear objective and that all its content is aimed at getting the user to perform that action.