The 2021 Email Marketing Strategy You Didn’t Know You Needed

Email marketing is one of the most profitable digital marketing channels. It is a proven way for businesses to reach and engage their customers and it even delivers an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent.

Most businesses eagerly rush to harness its power and reap the benefits, but this can’t happen without a thorough and carefully crafted email marketing strategy. 

This blog post will illustrate 8 important steps you need to take to form a solid email marketing strategy for your business.

So, let’s dig in!

1. Define your objectives

The first step in the creation of a successful email marketing strategy is to set your email marketing goals.

Establish not only what you wish to achieve and how you’ll approach it, but also the potential constraints and requirements in the process.

Some strategic goals you might set:

• Increase customer engagement
• Increase website traffic
• Raise brand awareness
• Build trust with your audience
• Move users through the sales funnel

Regardless of the goals you set, they need to be realistic and attainable. Moreover, they need to be relevant to both your immediate and future plans.

2. Choose your email marketing tool

The next step is to pick the right tools that will allow you to realize your goals.

Selecting the appropriate tool is no easy job as there is a plethora of them. 

However, some of the best email marketing services incorporate advanced automation features, various list segmentation options, and the ability to create professional-looking emails without spending ages to master.

Other useful features you might want to consider:

• Landing page builder, online forms, and ready-made email newsletter templates
• Affordability: a platform that remains affordable as your business grows
• Integrations: integration with applications such as CRM help you with personalization and data management.

3. Build your list

Now start growing your list. An excellent way to do this is by creating a newsletter signup form on your website. Here is an example from Razer.

Razer makes subscribing to their newsletter enticing since you immediately get a $10 discount. The key is to offer something valuable to the user.

Place subscription forms on high-traffic sections of your website to ensure maximum impact.

It is also a good idea to create landing pages, incentivizing your audience to become a member of your list. Just remember to show people the immediate benefits of joining. 

Last but not least, you want your lead generation tools to be effective, so enrich them with stunning visuals that grab the user’s attention.

4. Start segmenting your list

Segmentation is a powerful tactic allowing you to send highly-targeted email campaigns to the right people.

It can be done easily either through your email marketing platform or through CRM software.

Your sign-up forms are also crucial in the segmentation of your audience. By including fields such as gender, age, place of residence, etc you can collect valuable data that make segmentation easier.

Diving your audience will improve your email open rates since your campaigns will be highly relevant.

5. Craft your campaign

It’s time to start working on your email campaigns. If the email marketing service you chose has a drag-and-drop editor or pre-made email newsletter templates, you’ll feel like a pro straight away.

Depending on your goal, you’ll have to design a specific type of campaign.

Generally, there are 3 things you need to pay attention to when designing your campaign:

• email copy
• visuals
• CTAs

Your copy has to convince your audience to take the desired action, so it must be short and to-the-point. Moreover, it needs to be free of any grammatical errors to look professional.

To increase engagement and captivate subscribers, you’ll need some visuals. High-quality images work great towards creating a positive first impression. 

As for the CTA, it’s very important since it’s essentially the conversion point of emails. To boost click-through rates, use actionable wording that entices people to click. Moreover, to enhance visual communication, pick the right color for your CTA button.

Finally, don’t forget to include your branding.

6. Personalize

Personalization is absolutely essential in modern marketing, and yet 70% of brands fail to use personalized emails.

The first thing you need to work on is subject lines since they’re the first thing people see. And first impressions matter!

Make them short and highlight the value the user gets by clicking on the email.

Another good strategy is to use emojis to make your emails stand out.

Personalization doesn’t stop there, though. 

Your email content has to be tailored to your subscribers’ needs, as email blasts should be a “relic” of the past.

Leverage the power of dynamic content in order to display the right content to specific individuals. 

For instance, let’s say you have an eCommerce store, and you want to promote your products to countries with different weather conditions. Subscribers shall see products relevant to them, depending on the weather conditions occurring where they live.

7. Automate

Automating your campaigns is an absolute must for every successful and efficient marketer. 

For example, you can automate a welcome mail to be sent each time a user subscribes to your newsletter. The same can be done with the trigger being any sort of user action.

Automations are particularly helpful for eCommerce businesses. You can automate cart abandonment emails reminding customers to finalize their purchases or offer product recommendations based on their behavior.

Automating your campaigns is essential since you save both time and money.

8. A/B test and measure your campaigns

The last step is to A/B test your campaigns as marketing trends and consumer behavior change dynamically.

You send one variation of your campaign to a segmented part of your audience and another one to a different segment. Then you measure the performance of each campaign.

An A/B test helps you improve your open rates, CTR, and conversion rates. Be sure not to change more than one thing in your variations. Otherwise, you won’t get actionable data.

Conclusion

It’s time to upgrade your email marketing strategy. 

Email still delivers great results and it is an efficient way to reach and engage your subscribers.

Implement the above steps into your email marketing strategy and you’ll soon see better-performing campaigns and higher customer engagement!

Author bio

John Desyllas works as a Content Writer for email marketing automation software Moosend. He is very passionate about Digital Marketing and Business Translation. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.