How to create the right email marketing strategy for your brand?

 

Email marketing is a marketing strategy that helps build a healthy relationship with existing customers and acquire new customers for the brand. In this age of social media, one might think that E-mail is an old school strategy for marketing your brand but it remains relevant. Litmus estimates email marketing returns an average of $42 for every dollar spent.

Elements of effective email marketing strategy

An effective email marketing strategy has some crucial elements like a defined goal, a target audience, an organic email subscribers list, a “subscribe us” button, unique and attractive content, and time.

The first step to create an email marketing strategy for your brand is to set a goal and target audience for the brand. Selecting your audience needs more care to prevent your emails from landing in the spam folder of a non-targeted and uninterested audience.

The next step is to create an organic email list which you can create by adding a “Subscribe us”   button on your website. But the challenge here is that why a reader would subscribe to your mails? You need to give something for free in return for the subscription. It can be anything from a discount coupon to the special privilege of your products or earlier announcements for the subscribers. Even if you are offering a newsletter with a subscription, the content should be audience-oriented. After creating an email subscribers list you need to segment the list based on gender, age or location of the customers or you can use any other criteria to segment. Segmentation is important as it helps you tailor the content of the email as per the needs and demands of different segments. Strategists have observed that segmented lists bring more engagement. This email subscribers list needs regular cleaning to remove users who have unsubscribed and to re-engage the inactive users. The presence of inactive users in the list brings a drop in the engagement level.

What makes your emails engaging?

To get more engagement on your emails there are some things you should keep in mind. First, your mail should have a short but compelling subject line.

Second is the theme, design, template, format and content of your mail. To check the efficacy of all of the above things you need to do A/B testing. You can use cliffhangers to keep your audience engaged and excited about the next update. Avoid emails that are lengthy and full of images. Make your emails mobile-friendly.

The third is the personalization of emails. It includes addressing the mail to the name of the subscriber or sending mails that shows your exclusivity towards your subscribers. And, last is the timing and regularity of your emails. You need to check the correct timing for every segment of the list as this might be different for different segments. You can do this by checking the open rates or other such actions taken for your emails. For regularity, you may opt for email automation tools so that you don’t forget to email the client and don’t send extras too. Irregularity is sending 1 mail per week while you promised 3 or sending 4 emails a week while you promised just one. Your welcoming mail for the subscriber should make him clear about the number and timings of emails and offers he will receive. It is observed that adding an expiry or urgency in the email like “HURRY”, “OFFER ENDS IN 02:00 hours” or “LIMITED STOCK AVAILABLE” increases engagement and helps to convert more subscribers to customers.

The tools and techniques to make the right email marketing strategy for your brand are always evolving and your strategy should update and evolve with time too. An effective strategy takes business to a new level. Make sure you comply with all the rules and regulations while making an email marketing strategy and promoting your business.