How to build an email marketing strategy
- 1. 1 How to build an Email Marketing Strategy
- 2. 2 Table of Contents Creating an Email Marketing Strategy 3 Step One: Define Email Marketing 4 Step Two: Set Goals 5 Lead Generation and Sales Cycle Analysis 6 Step Three: Your List 8 Collecting Data at the Right Time 9 Plan for a Growing Email List 9 Step Four: Organize by Department or Group 10 Step Five: Plan for Content 11 Step Six: Bottom Line 12 Worksheets: Set Goals 13 Your List 14 Organize by Department or group 15 Plan for Content 16 Bottom Line 17 Looking Ahead 18
- 3. 3 Creating an Email Marketing Strategy Whether you are already using a form of email marketing and need to convince management to upgrade your strategy or you are completely new to the topic and need to show the importance of email, you should think about these major steps. Step One: Define Email Marketing Email marketing can mean lots of things to lots of people. To some it involves renting lists from 3rd parties while for others it means cultivating relationships with your existing contacts to drive sales as well as customer retention. For the purposes of this document, we define email marketing as the latter. Step Two: Set Goals Remember that you need to communicate the purpose of email marketing for your organization. Start with a goal so that others can see how it ties into the overall business strategy. Step Three: Your List Your contacts form the foundation of your strategy. After all, you’re building a strategy around communicating with them. Your goals are tied to their actions. Your lists are the most important piece of the puzzle. Successful email marketing is a result of sending relevant content, so your plan should include learning as much as you can about your contacts. Step Four: Organize by Department or Group How many people will use email marketing within your organization? Is it just for corporate communications or will the PR folks use it? Web group? Product marketing? Channel marketing? The toolkit will provide advice to help you get organized so that marketing can still have some control over the consistency of all communications. Step Five: Plan for Content One of the biggest reasons newsletters die is that people can’t come up with content at deadline. Create an editorial calendar for your newsletters and have this ready with your proposal. Step Six: Bottom Line People love numbers. Be prepared to discuss the ROI and the metrics you will use to determine your success. This document is organised around these main steps. Worksheets are provided at the end of the document to help you capture your thoughts. Let’s get started by looking at each of these in more detail.
- 4. 4 step one Define Email Marketing Before you begin to create your email marketing strategy, you should define what email marketing means to your organization. If email marketing had existed in 1828 when Noah Webster first published his American Dictionary of the English Language, the definition might have gone something like this: e•mail mar•ket•ing n. The use of email to deliver permission- based communications to build relationships, increase sales and improve customer retention. They key to the above definition is permission. While your organization may also rent or purchase lists to grow your business, this document will only focus on strategies for permission-based or in- house lists. Many organisations have realized that although building a house-list may take longer, it proves its value very quickly. The definition also mentions customer retention. Email is by far the most popular way to stay in touch with existing customers. By providing valuable information and updates based on their interests, email can help build a relationship between the organization and the customer. But there’s a far more meaningful definition of email marketing: what it means to you and your business. Defining the purpose of email marketing for your organization is critical and will be the driving force for all other email activities.
- 5. 5 step two Set Goals MarketingSherpa, publisher of case studies and research on internet marketing, posted an article in early 2005 about the top five frustrations in email marketing. Frustration #5 was the lack of respect that email received from management. Email can be seen as a tactical and inexpensive way to reach out to prospects and customers to quickly increase sales or drive traffic to the website. It’s a valid but very short-sighted view. By building a sound strategy, you will be able to set expectations for long term success up front and alleviate those frustrations. So, here’s the most important question you need to answer: What is the purpose of email marketing for your organization? Other important questions to answer include why email marketing? What will email marketing contribute to your existing marketing efforts? How will your marketing efforts tie together? What is your current lead generation process? How will email marketing contribute to lead generation? Do you communicate with customers on a regular basis already? Does email marketing replace or complement any other communication strategies? Still not sure? Here are a few examples of how different organizations use email marketing: The non-profit Audubon Nature Institute created a newsletter for each major audience: Members, Non-Members, and Community Leaders. The Member newsletter validates membership through unique content, the non-member newsletter drives additional traffic to the various parks, and the leader newsletter communicates activities as a result of donations. E-Commerce vendor Lydia’s Uniforms uses newsletters and email alerts to drive additional online sales, but they planned in advance what type of information they would collect so that they could segment their audience by various fields. They send special promos based on customers favourite brands or products. The highly relevant content has contributed to their overall success.
- 6. 6 Lead Generation and Sales Cycle Analysis At the very highest level you will probably be communicating with two groups of people: customers and non-customers. As part of your lead generation process, the email newsletter can help solidify your relationship with the non-customer or prospect. By outlining your organization’s process, you can see where opportunities exist. basic process Acquisition RETENTION Promotions Ads Direct Mail Action Website Buy Thank You Download Trade Shows Register PR Word of Mouth This diagram is a simple illustration of a lead generation process without email marketing. It shows visitors reaching the site and then taking a certain action. Currently the only follow up is a Thank You page that may show a receipt or confirmation. Let’s highlight some of the problems with this process. Web-centric - there is no effort towards customer retention. It is a very transactional approach. Lost opportunity - there is no collection of information for those that don’t act immediately. What about those conducting research who want to learn more about your offering or your industry? On the next page, we’ll take a look at a scenario with email marketing integrated into the process.
- 7. 7 INTEGRATED EMAIL MARKETING Acquisition RETENTION Promotions Ads Action Buy Download Direct Mail Register Website Invitation/Welcome Email and Trade Shows Regular Communication PR Sign up for Newsletter Word of Mouth This diagram mirrors the previous illustration but shows how easily you can use an email newsletter to capture leads that may only be researching at the time of the web-site visit. Lead Acquisition The newsletter signup form captures prospects that may not be ready to take other actions. By creating a newsletter or other communication for this audience, you can begin to build a relationship with them that can lead to sales or other desired action in the future. Without this regular communication, the contact could easily forget about your organization the minute they exit the website. Customer Retention For those that do take a desired action on the website, the process now includes a welcome email that invites them to stay in touch with your company. Additional benefits of adding email marketing to lead generation and the sales cycle: • Viral marketing opportunities enable word of mouth marketing. • Reinforcement of brand with continual communication. • Regular communication improves customer loyalty • Feedback from tracking reports provides info on interest levels • Ability to communicate with customers/ prospects based on past behaviour • Drives traffic to website
- 8. 8 step three Your List Successful email marketing starts with a quality list. After all, Marketing 101 tells us that we need to know our audience. Do you know your list? Take some time to note what information you have now and make a plan for how to capture additional information over time. The more you know about your readers, the easier it will be to provide valuable content within your communications. For our example company, their lists currently look like this: List Name Source of List Permission? Status Known Fields Customers CRM Yes Exported and name, address, ready phone, email Product A Trade Show No, need to Spreadsheet, name, email Prospects invite ready Interested Website Yes Text file, ready email Prospects Now think about what information you have and what you’d like to know about new prospects and customers. Typical information below: • Demographics (marital status, income, location, etc) • Interest area (product A or B, specific service, information, etc) • Amount purchased, donated, etc • Business info (industry, title, etc) • Time frame for making a decision • Budget The most powerful aspect of email marketing software is that you can segment your contacts based on known information, letting you send targeted and personal messages.
- 9. 9 Collecting Data at the Right Time After you have determined what type of data you have and what you need, the next step is to determine at what point you collect that information. Do you ask for it all up front? De-pending on your target audience, you may need to limit the amount of information asked initially so you don’t put customers off. Here are a few additional times you can collect information: • Have the Thank You page ask for additional information post- subscription. • Include survey questions throughout the life of the newsletter. • Include a survey in the confirmation or welcome email. • Prompt subscribers to update their information periodically. Plan for a Growing Email List An important element of any email marketing strategy includes plans for continuing to grow the list. Below are ideas for planned tactics to promote each newsletter. • Include “forward to friend” in all outbound emails. • Drive all prospects to website from all advertising. • Have newsletter opt-in box in checkout of e-commerce area of website. • Put website on all basic company docs: stationary, business cards, etc. • Have customer service ask all callers if they’d like to receive newsletter. • Add sign up form for newsletter on the website in prominent area. • Collect emails at checkout in retail stores. (if applicable) • Collect email addresses at trade shows and other events. • Mention the newsletter(s) and website on the Hold music for inbound calls. • Have support staff ask all callers if they’d like to receive newsletter. • Include link to newsletter sign up form in email signature (all employees, especially support and customer service staff) If you have no list and are starting from scratch we suggest: • Appending email addresses to your existing prospect/customer database • Start collecting email addresses from website.
- 10. 10 step four Organise by Department or Group So far, we have reviewed the purpose of email marketing and have looked at how it can complement existing marketing activities and provide a way to capture new leads and help build relationships. You know your audience now, so the next phase of building your email marketing strategy involves getting organized internally. After you have outlined how email marketing can fit into your own process and have identified your audience, you will start to see many opportunities of how to organize the information to reach your original goals. A simple communication chart will help you understand the role of each of your external communications and will help you get a feel for the resources required to produce each item. Here’s an example: Communication Owner Audience Format Purpose Frequency Customers, Monthly Marketing advocates, Template Retention Monthly newsletter community, analysts Promotion update Product Prospects, Unique Acquisition As neededMarketing customers each time Press release PR Journalists Stationary Inform As needed template Industry Channel Prospects, Template Retention Bi-monthly newsletter Marketing customers As you can see from this example, opportunities for email communications exist among other departments.
- 11. 11 step five Plan for Content Now that you know who you are communicating with and the type of communication you want to produce, you need to plan the actual content for each item. To do this, you should create an editorial calendar. This will help you prepare for the future and ensure that each communication contains relevant content. Our example company produces a monthly newsletter. Here’s their editorial calendar for the first five months of the year: Communication January February March April May Monthly 2005 Industry Product Big New results, customer newsletter update launch contest highlights win And so on. Don’t forget to decide how many topics will be covered in each newsletter. Some focus only on one topic, others have 5-10 topics per issue. The possibilities are endless with email. But don’t forget the main reason why you are sending these emails – they should be valuable to your audience. Don’t just send content because you have a list of people to receive it.
- 12. 12 step six Bottom Line As with any critical marketing function, you need to define metrics for success. For each type of publication, you should outline what will represent success. Sharing these metrics will help communicate with all involved how email can truly impact the organization. Here are a few ideas of items to be used as metrics: Email Marketing Reports • Open Rate – The number of messages opened is a general metric to gauge interest • Click-Through Rate – Number of people that clicked through a link within your message. This is a very good metric to measure interest and activity. Business Metrics • Conversions by source – The number of people that took a specific action as a result of your message. • Forward rate – How many times the message was forwarded to others. This measures viral marketing or “buzz” • Leads by source – track leads from email forwarding or referral. • Website traffic before email marketing and after. • Customer retention before email marketing and after. Benchmarking • Sales metrics before email marketing and trends after. • Website traffic the day an email goes out. • Conversion rate from email before and after initiating email marketing. Strategise monitors average open and click-through rates for all customers. To learn more about how you can benchmark your numbers against averages in your industry, contact us.
- 13. 13 Worksheet: Set Goals ANSWER THIS What is the purpose of email marketing for your organization? DIAGRAM THIS Outline your current process for lead generation through to customer communication. Show where people are coming from and where you are driving them to and what you want them to do. Do as many outlines as you need if you have different processes for different groups or industry verticals. ANSWER THIS What are the issues with the above process? What opportunities are you missing?
- 14. 14 Worksheet: Your List COMPLETE THIS Write down all sources of customer and lead information and their status. List Name Source of List Email Status Known Fields Permission? List all the other fields you have or hope to have for each contact. After you have deter-mined which fields you have or need, then you can determine at what point in the lead generation process you request that information. Field Where to Capture That Information
- 15. 15 Worksheet: Organise by Department or Group COMPLETE THIS Use this table to develop your email communication chart. Communication Owner Audience Format Purpose Frequency • Communication – the various publications or types of messages that you’ll be sending? • Owner – which department of your company this communication belongs to? • Audience – the recipients of your publications. • Format – the planned look of the message. Some may be rich text, others may be a formatted template used each time, others will be unique each time, etc. • Purpose – perhaps the most important, why are you sending this email? • Frequency – determine how often you plan to send each item.
- 16. 16 Worksheet: Plan for Content COMPLETE THIS Build a suggested topic list for each item on your email communication content plan. Remember that not all items have to be sent regularly – typically only newsletters are sent on a regular basis. Communication If you’re having trouble thinking of different topics for your individual communications, look at other newsletters. There are tons of websites out there with ideas for how to write a successful newsletter. Just a few resources that we like: Marketing Sherpa – www.marketingsherpa.com Email Universe – www.emailuniverse.com MarketingProfs – www.marketingprofs.com
- 17. 17 Worksheet: Bottom Line COMPLETE THIS Determine your metrics for success. It would also be a good idea to document those stats as they are now if you know them. You can use them as a baseline to build from. Metric Current stats
- 18. 18 Looking Ahead After you have set up your lists and have a plan for what you’ll be sending to and to whom, spend some time thinking even further ahead. What will your lists look like in 6 months? If you could further divide lists into more specific segments, what would those segments be? And have you collected the information to get you there? Email is organic – things are always growing and changing. What interests a customer one year can change the next year. Customers change or discard email addresses. Knowing where your email communications are taking you will only help your marketing strategy. What are the next steps? Establish the “launch” date for your first new campaign. Build a project plan that lists everything you need to successfully launch your campaign List owners for each item and deadlines. Major items include the list, the content, and the creative. Communicate your activities and plans to others in your organization. © Copyright 2017, Strategise. All rights protected and reserved. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.