Email Marketing Strategy
Thursday, August 26th, 2010If you really want to be successful in marketing your business or firm, you simply must develop and implement an email marketing strategy. Everyone uses email. Even the popular social networks and blogs rely on email. But you cannot just write an email and blast it out to everyone you have ever met. That is called spam or “spray-n-pray” and it can really make people angry.
Marketers love email because it is flexible, free and traceable. Designed properly an email marketing strategy can be the most important marketing tool available to you. It can be used to increase brand awareness, to notify customers and prospects of new product or service offerings, to follow up when people make a purchase or subscribe to your content publications and to cultivate a relationship with your customers and prospects. According to a 2009 study by Unilever, email marketing regarding a product launch will increase brand awareness by 9%.
What is in an Email Marketing Strategy?
Your marketing strategy should answer all of the questions you and your customers or prospects would ask about why you are sending out emails.
– Why. The first part of your email marketing strategy outlines why you want to send out emails. What is the goal you hope to accomplish by doing so? There might be several reasons for sending several types of emails.
– When. When, and how often you send out emails to your customers and prospects is a critical part of your email marketing strategy. How often does your strategy indicate you should contact your various list segments? Will you send a monthly newsletter of some kind? Will you send occasional new product or service announcements? Will you undertake a major product launch with a carefully crafted series of emails? Will you send reminders of warranty expirations or annual events, etc.
– List Segment. Because the goal of the strategy is to make each email sent relevant to the receiver, you will need to be very specific about who will receive each email. In fact, you will probably want to send several versions of an email to different segments of your mailing list.
– What the customer needs to hear. What do you want to say to customers and prospects? Better yet, what does your customer need to hear from you? A strategy should indicate a purpose for each email.
For the most part, an email marketing strategy aims to sell products and services, provide information that moves readers closer to a purchasing decision, and follow up after the purchase is made to sell another product or service or to ensure that the customer is happy with the previous purchase. A good email marketing strategy will reflect the recent trends moving email from “mass marketing” to “mass personalization” of the message, the offer, and the interaction. An effective email marketing strategy also includes a measurement and analysis segment. You will want to measure the rate of response to your email messages and refine them for greater effectiveness. You will also learn more about how your customers want to interact with you.
Finally, your email marketing strategy must respect each person you email. Keep in mind that 70% of our decision to buy, according to John McKean (of the Center for Information Based Competition), is determined by “how we are treated as people.
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