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How to Quickly Launch Your Email Marketing Strategy
While many brands already have email in place, messaging needs are changing fast.
Virtual contact is more crucial than ever before, and with communication ramping up online, marketing teams are asking, “how can we quickly launch an email marketing strategy?”
If there was ever a time to reevaluate your current plan, now would be it. Before you can crack down and learn how to quickly launch a new one, however, you need to first look at your marketing strategy as a whole.
Build your marketing calendar with this free guide.
Recap: what makes a successful marketing strategy
A marketing strategy is a brand’s overall plan for not only reaching prospects, but also converting them into leads and eventually, paying customers. When it comes to discussion about what makes up a successful marketing strategy, three main aspects must be defined and met:
- Understanding who your ideal target audience member is
- Finding ways to build strong relationships with new customers while also strengthening current relationships
- A strategy that generates a return on your investment (ROI)
The challenge that most marketing teams run into is determining which marketing channels will suit their needs the most. With so many digital marketing channels available, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. However, a few are considered the most valuable, including:
- Social media
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
- Search engine optimization and more
Having multiple channels gives your audience different ways to discover and interact with your brand. In the same breath, it also offers you several ways to communicate with your audience, helping you to build stronger relationships with both new and returning audience members.
How to get engagement (despite algorithms and ad blockers.)
Why email marketing should be the center of your strategy
With so many marketing channels available to choose from, it can be hard to choose which ones will garner the most ROI. However, there’s one that’s a guaranteed win for your brand, especially once you’ve solidified your strategy: email marketing.
Not only does email marketing generate the highest overall ROI, generating an average of $38 for every $1 spent, but it’s the easiest way to reach those who want to hear from you. Email marketing best practices ensures that you’re giving your audience members the option to hear from you, and that requires the use of email opt-in measures.
Not yet sold on the idea of email marketing? Here are a handful of statistics that may help convince you of its benefits:
- In 2019 alone, approximately 293.6 billion emails were sent and received each day – Statista
- The average email open rate falls at 17.8% across all industries – Campaign Monitor
- Total number of email users worldwide in 2019 peaked at 3.9 billion – Statista
- The click-to-open rate across all industries averages 14.3% – Campaign Monitor
Source: Statista
Not only should your marketing team be investing their time in your email marketing strategy, but it should be the center point of your whole marketing strategy.
Why? Because all significant digital marketing channels can be utilized to funnel new leads into your email subscriber list.
Once there, you can easily segment your subscribers into appropriate lists, ensuring that you’re sending only the most relevant information to every person. This is essential because 72% of consumers state that they exclusively engage with brands that send out personalized content via email.
How to quickly launch your email marketing strategy in 6 steps
Now that you’re refreshed on what makes up a successful marketing strategy and why email marketing plays such a crucial role in the process, it’s time to focus your attention on how to quickly launch your email marketing strategy. There’s more to it than just creating a stunning email template and sending it out.
Here are six steps to developing and launching your email marketing strategy.
1. Know who your target audience is.
The number one rule of email marketing is to know who your targeted audience members are and what it is they’re looking for from you.
Your target audience is made up of individuals of a certain group that are looking for something very particular. For example, our friends at Emma have a target audience that’s made up of marketing professionals. More specifically, marketing professionals who practice email marketing. So they tailor their email content to that particular audience.
Source: Really Good Emails
2. Analyze your current strategy.
Once you’ve nailed down your ideal target audience member, you need to take some time to analyze your current marketing strategy and how successful it’s been for you up until this point. This requires you to take adequate time to review each part of your marketing strategy—whether it be social media, PPC advertisements, or even more traditional channels, such as TV ads or mailers.
One way to analyze your strategy’s success is by reviewing your overall ROI for each channel. If you see substantial returns, then that marketing channel is likely one you should keep and integrate into your new strategy. Alternatively, if you don’t see ROI from a certain channel, it’s time to consider axing it in favor of something new.
3. Research your competitors.
If you’re feeling stuck and unsure of how you can improve your marketing strategy, then you and your team should do a bit of research into what your competitors are doing. This is called a competitive analysis and helps you see how others in your particular industry or niche are approaching their marketing tactics.
While you can take the time and follow competitors on their social media platforms or subscribe to their newsletters to see what they’re up to, there are several tools available to help you conduct competitive analysis, including SEMrush.
Source: SEMrush
4. Set reasonable goals.
Once you’ve done your research, it’s time to start laying out your goals. What is it that you hope to achieve through your email marketing strategy? How’re you going to achieve each of them? You want to be SMART about your goal setting, and that means taking the time to outline every aspect of each one of your goals. From what it is to how you’ll achieve it, and in what time frame—the more detailed, the better.
Source: Content Marketing Institute
5. Build your email list.
You’ve done your research and you’ve outlined your goals in as much detail as you could. Now it’s time to start building your email list. If you already have an existing list, then you want to reach out and see if each subscriber still wants to remain on your list. Sending out an email confirmation or opt-in is the only way to ensure that those on your emailing list want to be there.
Source: Really Good Emails
If you’re building your email list from scratch, there are several ways to help you get started, including:
- Dedicated landing pages, such as a newsletter signup
- Utilizing blog CTAs to encourage email signups
- Social media posts/ads encouraging potential leads to join your community
- Offering up free content/tools (otherwise known as gated content) for those who share their email for a download or access to a tool and so much more
Source: Campaign Monitor
Once you have your email list ready, you want to make sure you’re taking the time to segment your list into detailed categories. This ensures that you’re sending out only the most relevant information to those who want it. You can segment your lists in several ways, including:
- Age
- Gender
- Location and more
The more detailed information you can get, the better. However, if you aren’t comfortable with asking for more detailed information, then consider supplying your subscribers with an email preference center that gives them the opportunity to tell you exactly what they’re expecting from you.
Source: Campaign Monitor
6. Determine which email campaigns will best suit your needs.
Now that you’ve started building your audience and you have an idea of what they want to receive from you, it’s finally time to determine which email campaigns will best suit your consumers’ needs, while helping you reach your marketing goals.
There are dozens of different email campaigns that your marketing team can choose from, including:
- Welcome series
- Promotional campaigns
- Newsletters
- New content announcements
- Product/service update or launch announcements
- Transactional emails and more
Take a detailed look at who your audience is, why they’ve come to you for their needs, and review their email preferences, as these will all help you determine the best types of email campaigns you should be sending out.
Wrap up
When it comes to learning how to quickly launch your email marketing strategy, it’s not nearly as challenging as some may think. This is especially true when you follow these six steps:
- Know your ideal targeted audience.
- Evaluate your current plan.
- Conduct a competitive analysis.
- Set SMART goals.
- Continuously build your email subscriber list.
- Decide which email campaigns suit both your needs and those of your subscribers.
Looking for more information on how to quickly launch your email marketing strategy? Be sure to check out our complete email marketing guide for beginners.
