Email Marketing Strategy 101

We all know that overplanning is not good. Action is needed. However, jumping in without figuring things out is not advisable either. This applies to email marketing as well.

I will share the main elements of an email marketing strategy and the basic decisions we need to make (understand: "problems to solve") for each element:

Technical Setup

• What will be the primary email marketing tool you will use?
• What tools will you use for testing and optimization?
• What tools will you use for tracking and analysis?
• How will you ensure that all these tools work well together?

Database Building

• What lead magnets will you use to build your database?
• Where and how will you position the signup form?
• What channels will you use to promote the form and gather new subscribers?
• How will you ensure that you obtain real, quality leads?

Targeting/Segmentation

• What are the demographic characteristics of the people you want to send your messages to?
• What are their interests? What do they want to read, watch, buy?
• What is their usual behavior? Regarding email campaigns? Online? While shopping?
• How will you provide suitable information as you build your database so you can target your emails precisely to the desired audience?

Content Strategy

• What types of emails do you plan to send? Useful information? News and events? Discounts and promotions? In what ratio?
• What will be the visual style of your email campaigns? Plain text? Clean with minimal images? Text and visuals - almost equally balanced? Predominantly images?
• What will be the structure of your messages? Like a regular letter? Action-oriented with a clear call to action at the end? Multiple sections and links, newsletter-style?

Dynamics

• What will be the frequency of sending your campaigns?
• What time will you send the newsletters?
• On which days of the week will you send them?
• What will be the process? One campaign/send-off? A series of messages? Branching?

Improvement Strategy

• Which metrics will you track and how often? How?
• What reports will you prepare for email marketing, how often, with whom will you discuss them, and how will you proceed afterward?
• How will you organize the planning and implementation of improvement measures derived from the analyses?

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As you can see, many things need to be considered. Think about the questions. Can you come up with some of the answers (or all of them)?