Introduction

Email Marketing is an essential marketing tool that every business should have in place. The ROI is pretty high. For every $1 spent you earn $42 which provides a  4200% return. However, these numbers only make sense if you have a plan or strategy in place to make sure you are getting the most out of the time and resources spent creating your email campaigns.

Remember: Although you may have a large list of subscribers and a lot of email content to share, it doesn’t mean that you will automatically see a huge turn out with your email campaigns.

As you begin to prepare for the year ahead, it is important to consider several things you can do to drive more engagement, improvement to your CTR, and curate more compelling content for your campaigns.

 

How Do You Develop An Email Marketing Strategy?

When it comes to creating an email strategy you need to be clear on what you hope to achieve. The purpose of your emails could either be lead nurturing, customer retention, or customer engagement. When you are planning out your email strategy, here are a few things to consider:

 

  • Who are your emails intended for?

  • Why are you sending those emails?

  • What types of emails are you going to send?

  • How often are you sending these emails?

  • How will you design these emails?

Once you have a clear understanding of the direction you want your email campaigns to go you will be able to see the effect it has on your conversion rates.

Personalization Meets Segmentation

Before you press the send button to everyone on your email list, you want to get extremely clear on who you are sending your emails to. The worst possible thing that can happen when sending emails is that they land in spam, they never get opened and the content that you’ve worked hard on is not received.  When crafting your next email campaign be sure to make sure personalization is top priority. This will help expand your customer retention efforts. Your customers will feel more engaged and interested because they will feel connected to the content you are sharing.

Here are some ways you can improve personalization:

 

  1. Directly address your recipients, put their names in the subject line and intro of the emails

  2. Include Location-relevant images, to make it relevant to where they are located

  3. Consider sending them information related to the items they abandoned in their cart

  4. Send emails from a person not a brand.

Segmentation

When you consider personalization, the easiest way to ensure that you are tailoring your message to the right audience, segmentation is a good way to organize your content.  One way to segment your email content is by behavior. This type of segmentation included organizing your subscribers by how they have interacted with your emails in the past. You can also arrange your audience data by other measures like: Demographics or by the subscribers birthday.

Predictive Marketing gives you the ability to segment your email campaigns any way you see fit.

Define The Purpose Of Your Email Campaigns

There are several different types of email marketing campaigns. Every time you send an email, you should have a clear purpose behind it. Each type of email takes a different angle to engage with your subscribers. Let’s dive into the most common types of emails and define the most appropriate times to send them.

Welcome Emails

These are emails that are sent out to brand new subscribers. Consider it a virtual first impression. This type of email falls into the consideration bucket in the digital marketing funnels. These are sent when users have initially subscribed or want more information. You can also use these emails for nurturing your leads. Welcome emails should be conversational with an inviting tone and it should also include a brief summary that tells customers what makes your brand unique or tells your brand’s story.

Newsletter Emails

The #1 most popular type of email is the newsletter.  These are emails that are sent to subscribers on a regular basis. They contain news, informational content, and relevant information about products and services. Sometimes they also include articles, blogs, and even customer testimonials. The benefits of email newsletters is to build trust with your subscribers and showcase your brand’s expertise. You can also create lasting relationships with your subscribers.

Promotional Emails

This is a type of email that is designed to inform your subscribers about your new or existing products or services. The problem with these types of emails are very common and they can be a tad generic. The goal for promotional emails is to speed up the purchasing process and encourage subscribers to take some kind of action.This type of email falls into the Consideration and Loyalty stages of the digital marketing funnel.

Retention Emails

When you think of retention you should also consider loyalty. These are the types of emails that are sent to current customers and subscribers with the intent of keeping them engaged. With retention emails it is all about timing  and staying focused on the goals at hand. One example of a retention email is a cart abandonment email. This email encourages customers to purchase the item they left behind.

 

What Is The Frequency Of Your Email Marketing Campaigns?

The rhythm and timing of sending your emails is critical to the success of your campaigns. When sending emails you want to play a very cautious field of avoiding spamming your subscribers.  Consider the timing of when your emails are sent. If you have subscribers both on the east coast and the west coast, you have to make sure you are sending the emails during reasonable times of the day. 

Using Predictive Marketing you can send designated batches of emails during the duration of your campaign during specific times of day. 

When you consider the frequency of your email marketing campaigns , be sure to maintain a sense of consistency.  For example,  if you are sending company newsletters to your clients on a monthly basis, you should have that email scheduled to go out on the same day every month.

 

Choose Consistent Layouts and Designs With Your Brand

The look and feel of your email marketing campaigns should always be in alignment with your brand.  Depending on the type of email you are sending your layout should showcase either new blog posts, recent client updates, and any new products or services you are promoting.

With your email marketing strategy for 2023, it is a best practice to test out different designs with an A/B testing option to determine which design would work best.

Be sure to include important elements like:

 

Conclusion

Predictive Marketing is one of the best resources for reworking and restructuring your Email Marketing Strategy in the new year. You can use this integration  in Salesforce and send your email content directly to your segmented contacts.

For more information on how you can improve your email marketing campaign design and improve your email deliverability in Salesforce, book a demo now with Predictive here.