Starting with email marketing: creating an email marketing strategy in 6 steps.

In the ideal situation, email marketing is an integral part of your marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy serves as the starting point, where you’ve already addressed most aspects of an email marketing strategy. However, we also know that in practice, this isn’t always the case. If you want to get started with email marketing quickly without overhauling your entire marketing strategy, be sure to take the time to go through these 6 steps to efficiently establish an email marketing strategy.

6 essential components of an email marketing strategy

An email marketing strategy is a strategic marketing approach aimed at disseminating content through email marketing, contributing to the attraction and retention of a predetermined target audience, with the ultimate goal of acquiring new or repeat customers from this audience.

In an email marketing strategy, the following components must be included:

1. Objective
2. Target Audience
3. Content
4. Frequency
5. Email Marketing Tool
6. KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

Let’s briefly discuss each of these components.

Determine the goal of your email marketing strategy

Email marketing is a way to directly engage with your (potential) customers. But what do you want to achieve with this contact? The goal of your email marketing strategy plays a crucial role in the type of emails and content you will share with your target audience. A goal of email marketing can include:

– Building brand awareness
– Increasing website traffic
– Enhancing product or service knowledge among the audience
– Acquiring new customers
– Generating more online sales
– Increasing online sales from existing customers
– Relationship management or building relationships

Which target audience(s) do you want to reach with email marketing?

The goal and the target audience together form the most critical aspects of the email marketing strategy. Whom do you want to reach? Email marketing is particularly suitable for approaching different target audiences in their unique ways. Consider potential customers, existing customers, customers based on their purchased product or service, regular customers, or customers who have only made a one-time purchase. Additionally, you can segment your target audiences based on events, so someone who downloads a whitepaper receives a different newsletter than someone who registers in exchange for a discount code. The next question is: how do you obtain the necessary email addresses for your email marketing? Examples of sources include:

• CRM systems
• Online campaigns
• Existing customers
• Participants in (online events)
• Sign-ups through your website or social media

A sign-up via the website or social media can result from a simple call to action or the opportunity to register for the newsletter. If you’re looking for new ways to collect email addresses via your website, consider publishing a whitepaper or e-book, a discount code, or other incentives. Of course, when collecting contact information, you must comply with applicable privacy rules.Once you know which target audience(s) you want to reach and how to collect the contact information of these audiences, it’s time to think about the content you will share with each target audience.

A clear plan and tools for an email marketing strategy

Email marketing goes beyond a one-time newsletter. It’s a full-fledged marketing channel that needs to be integrated into the marketing mix. However, many organizations struggle with some aspect of implementation or creating a plan. For example, they may lack the knowledge or capacity to design, choose the right program, load addresses, and create the necessary emails.In practice, collaboration works best. Merkelijkheid takes care of the necessary planning and implementation, ensuring that your story stands out. We work together to achieve results and ensure that email marketing contributes to the commercial success of your brand. Contact us, and we’ll be happy to share our approach with practical examples.

Content tailored to your target audiences

Each target audience faces its own challenges and choices. Email marketing works best when you can provide each target audience with content that aligns with the phase of the customer journey they are currently in. So, for each target audience, ask yourself:

– What needs or problems is this target audience seeking to solve?
– What information will help this target audience make a choice?
– What information does the target audience already have, and what are they still looking for?
– What type of content can I offer this information?
– What content will convince my target audience to make an inquiry or purchase?
– What form of content appeals to my target audience?

If you know your target audience well, you’ll understand their needs, and you can provide appropriate content at that point. Take stock of existing content and what needs to be produced. If you’re still unsure or looking for more information, consider conducting keyword research. This provides insights into your target audience’s needs and opportunities to use your content for better organic visibility.

Appropriate content doesn’t just consist of the right topics but also the right emails. Everyone is familiar with the classic newsletter, where you periodically send updates about new products, developments, or recently published articles. However, email marketing offers more possibilities. Consider drip mailings, where recipients receive a series of emails on the same topic, promotional mailings for a single product or product range with a specific offer, and emails for special occasions such as seasons, special days, or “hook moments.”

The right frequency for emails

How often should you send emails to your target audiences? This depends on your market, target audience, and their needs. However, our golden rule is to only send emails when you have something genuinely meaningful to share. You certainly want to avoid recipients ignoring your emails because they find them annoying or irrelevant. You can determine the email frequency based on your product life cycle, the average duration of a purchase phase, or the introduction of new products in your assortment.

If there’s no clear frequency, monthly, biweekly, or weekly emails are common. Test the frequency and decide based on the results whether your target audience wants more or fewer emails.

Which email marketing tool suits you?

You don’t send emails to your target audience manually from your email program; you use an email marketing tool for that. But which tool is right for you? There are many different providers, including well-known platforms like Mailchimp and SendinBlue, but many CRM systems like Salesforce also offer options to send personalized bulk emails.

Choose the tool based on your needs:

– Does the email data need to be integrated with a CRM system or webshop?
– Is design and user experience important, or do you value ease of use when creating emails?
– How much can you afford to spend on the system, and how many emails do you want to be able to send?
– How important are features like targeting different audiences and automated emails based on events?

Investigate which aspects of the different tools best fit your organization.

KPIs tailored to your email marketing strategy

A strategy is not complete without determining when it is successful and how that success will be measured. Which KPIs fit the objectives behind your email marketing strategy? Examples of KPIs include:

• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Website traffic from emails
• Conversion rate
• Order value
• Revenue
• Viewed videos
• Number of new email sign-ups

Are you convinced and ready to start with email marketing? Take the first step toward a successful email marketing strategy by setting clear goals for what you want to achieve with different target audiences. Need help? We’re here to assist you in making email marketing a full-fledged marketing channel. Contact us for more information and real-world examples.