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How to create an effective email marketing strategy? (Step-By-Step Guide)

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how to create an email marketing strategy
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This is a complete step-by-step guide to creating an effective email marketing strategy. 

These guidelines help our own marketing team to send emails to our database of +200K contacts in 6 countries.

You’ll learn how to:

  1. Set email marketing goals 
  2. Identify trends
  3. Monitor your competition 
  4. Audit your audience 
  5. Grow email lists
  6. Segment your database
  7. Pick newsletter types
  8. Check legal requirements 
  9. Create newsletter templates 
  10. Determine sending frequency
  11. Create newsletter content
  12. Select visuals 
  13. Run deliverability check
  14. Measure your results

    Let’s dive right in. 🤿  🌊

1. Set email marketing goals

Setting clear goals should be your starting point. Once you identify specific goals, you can move forward to planning your newsletter templates, visuals, copy and other important aspects of email marketing. 

Note: goals should help you achieve your business goals. In other words, email marketing is just a weapon for helping you achieve bigger goals, not a goal itself.  

Let’s compare these email marketing goals and the steps for attaining them: 

email marketing goals examples

2. Identify trends

You probably don’t want to read a newsletter with outdated design and slang words no one uses anymore. That’s why trendwatching should be added to your email marketing strategy. 

Keep an eye on the latest trends and start using them before they become mainstream.  

What can you follow: 

  • Latest newsletter design trends
  • What is talked about in your industry
  • New features

Learn more: Top Newsletter Design Trends for 2020

For example, interactive newsletters (like the one below) is one of the latest trends in email marketing.

interactive newsletter example

3. Monitor your competition

Spy on your competition to see what newsletters others create and how they approach email marketing in general. 

4. Audit your audience 

The good ol’ buyer persona concept is a good way to start analyzing your target audience. It can give you some hints for your content marketing in general.

When it comes to email marketing, you can take a more granular look at your audience. Analyze, for example, these factors: 

  • What email clients they use 
  • When they are most active (refer to the reports section in your email tool to see when your newsletters are mostly opened)
  • What devices are popular among them

Here’s what your audience portrait might look like:

email marketing reader example

5. Grow email lists

In case you don’t have a contact database yet, now it’s the time to start building one. Here are some of the ways to grow an email list from scratch:

  1. Place discount pop-ups and offer discounts in exchange for an email address
  2. Place exit pop-ups 
  3. Have an opt-in form on your site
  4. Create downloadable content (a.k.a. lead magnets)
  5. Add event or webinar attendees to your mailing list
  6. Provide early access invitations for new products
  7. Create online quizzes and send results to those who leave their contacts
  8. Offer free wifi in exchange for an email

We discuss these steps in detail in this video:

 

Note! To see the video below, give cookie consent to the Marketing section. Open cookie manager.

6. Segment your database

Today’s email marketing is all about reaching your audience on a personal level. In fact, email personalization produces 6x higher revenue and transaction rates (Backlinko). 

Segmenting your email lists is crucial for sending personalized emails. You can segment your lists based on your industry and your needs. 

For example:

  • Geography
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Company
  • Industry
  • Job Title
  • Past Purchases
  • Event participants
  • Cart abandonment (for eCommerce) 

How to segment your email lists?
 

  • Ask the right questions in your subscription forms: if you are going to send newsletters based on their geography, the location field should be a mandatory field on your forms
  • Use dynamic lists: many email marketing tools can compile a new list from your existing users based on the criteria you set up

7. Plan newsletter types

Now it’s the time to think of the topic clusters or newsletter types. Here are the most common types of newsletters: 

  • Promotional: upselling, new product announcements, webinar invitations
  • Behavioral: welcome newsletters, “we miss you” emails, cart abandonment
  • Informational: CEO updates, Terms of Service

8. Check legal requirements 

Make sure your actions are in accordance with GDPR. Each and every member of your team should be familiar with the key rules: 

  • It is mandatory to get the users' consent for email marketing so use double-opt-in messages
  • Companies are forbidden to send an unsolicited commercial email by purchasing email lists
  • All email communications must include the opt-out functionality (an unsubscribe button) and a physical locator (corporate address)
  • Organizations in breach of GDPR can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 Million (whichever is greater).

Learn more: GDPR Basics [+Checklist]: Get in Terms with the EU Data Protection Regulation

9. Create newsletter templates 

Whether you are using ready-made email templates or creating customized ones with your email marketing software provider, go through the essentials of a newsletter template. 

Vital components of a newsletter

Let’s take a look at these must-have newsletter components:

must-have newsletter components

  • Header: add your logo and a link to view your newsletter in browser 
  • Text block: make sure your heading style stands out 
  • Call-to-Action (CTA): direct your readers to your site or landing pages and make your CTA copy enticing enough  
  • Footer: add your contact information and an unsubscribe link

Build accessible newsletters

Today’s digital content should be accessible to all groups, including people with different kinds of disabilities. Here’s the checklist to help you build accessible newsletters:

  • Logically placed and scannable sections
  • Alt tags for images
  • Contrasting and consistent color scheme
  • Descriptive and clear text 
  • Descriptive subject line

Read more on newsletter accessibility on this post by our UX designer Elisa Raittila: Is Your Newsletter Accessible? Should It Be?

10. Determine sending frequency

There are tons of studies on “best times to send emails”. 

All of them have one limitation: they ignore the fact that your audience might be located in different time zones and might have different online preferences. 

That’s why you should decide on the frequency and the sending time for your newsletters that work for your company. Some tips to remember: 

  • Use scheduling feature: this is a huge time-saver if you plan newsletters well in advance or need to reach your readers on weekends
  • Respect your readers: Do not send emails every week if you promised monthly sendings and vice versa
  • Always reserve space for ad-hoc newsletters: no one expected to communicate COVID-19 updates but companies had to adjust and reconsider their newsletter scheduling

11. Create newsletter content

The next step is to decide what the body of your newsletter will contain. Below you’ll find some tips to help you plan your newsletter content.

Editorial calendar 

In case you don’t have a content calendar yet, try any online resource, for example, Monday.com templates 

Plan in advance
Start early enough, especially if you need to involve others for your newsletter content. Asking your CEO to give a quote for your newsletter one day before the actual sending might be too late. 

Utilize newsletter content to its maximum potential
Your newsletter content can be a base for your press release or vice versa, especially when it comes to important announcements or your biggest achievements. 

Pay attention to all newsletter content
Check your subject line, preheader and plain text version to make sure you have unique content in all components of your newsletter.

Extra tip: Seeking inspiration for your newsletter copy? You can find plenty of ideas on Just Good Copy

12. Select visuals 

We all create the first impression of a company when checking their Instagram visuals. The same goes for your newsletter images. Pay enough attention to selecting good visuals for your emails.

Images

  • Use only high-quality images: blurry or pixelated photos do not look professional
  • Shoot your own photos: using stock images is always an option but personal photos create friendlier vibes 
  • Add links to images: increase newsletter CTR by adding links to all images you use
  • Keep the right image-to-text ratio: your newsletter may end up in spam if the amount of text is not in balance with your images. Professional email tools tell you this before you hit the send button.
  • Avoid large image uploads: newsletters containing heavy files are slower to upload and have higher spam points

Online tools for creating images

Short on resources? Use one of these free online tools for creating infographics or simple images: 

Videos

Adding the word “video” in your subject line can increase the open rates by 6% (SuperOffice). People love and want more videos.

We recognized this need and added a video block to our templates.

video in newsletters example

 

Online tools for creating videos

If in-house video production is out of your budget, check these tools:

13. Run deliverability check

Did you know that the bounce rate of 10% and higher might be alarming? Here are some deliverability tips from our specialists: 

  • Monitor hard and soft bounces as well as inactive recipients. Persistent emails to these addresses will get your connections deferred.
  • Consider sending a reconfirmation email to inactive subscribers periodically. Or just remove them entirely.
  • Sending emails to users who are not reading them, or who mark them as "spam," will hurt your delivery metrics and reputation.
  • Test your emails' visual look as a plain text version. Some users won't see images in your email by default.
  • Link to domains, not IP addresses.
  • Don't include: HTML forms, JavaScript, or embedded objects (like flash or ActiveX.)

14. Measure your results

Wouldn’t it be great to plan your marketing based on real data instead of doing guess work? 

If you just nodded, be ready to monitor the success of your newsletters on a regular basis. Here are some of the key metrics to focus on. 

Top metrics of email success:

  • Open Rate (OR)
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR)
  • Unsubscribe Rate
  • Bounces
  • Conversions
  • Return on investment (ROI)

Learn more: How to Increase Email OR and CTR? 13 Most Effective Tactics

Tools for monitoring your email marketing results: 

  • Built-in reporting tools: Email marketing providers offer basic reporting features which track almost all the essential metrics, such as OR, CTR, bounce rate, and unsubscriptions
  • Google Analytics: Check your website traffic or conversion from newsletters
  • Google Data Studio: Take an overview of how your email marketing performs against other marketing channels

Interested to hear more?

Get familiar with our newsletter tool LianaMailer, and feel welcome to contact our experts to further discuss improving your newsletters.

Contact us!

 

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