According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing has an average ROI of $42 for every dollar spent, the second highest of all digital marketing channels (SEO is the highest ROI). As a marketer, I love email marketing campaigns as they allow me to send relevant messages about my brand, target my audience, reinforce my brand and to satisfy my geeky side, measure it all.
Step One: Write Down Your Objective(s)
The first step to planning your email marketing campaign is to outline your objectives. Your objectives could include selling tickets to a special event, announcing a discount for your products or soliciting funds for your annual fundraising campaign. You can have one objective or multiple objectives. Write them down.
Step Two: Determine Frequency
You’ll also want to consider your goals for frequency. How often do you want to send out your email messages? You definitely don’t want to fatigue your email list, but you still want to make sure your messages are read. Ideally, you want to be at a 20% open-rate for your emails. Sometimes to reach that goal you may want to use less frequency. Finding the right balance for your audience is key.
Step Three: Build Your Content
Start building an inventory of content. Think about what you’ll send out and when. Examples include seasonal trends, triggers (Birthdays), special promotions or discounts, industry specific news, event announcements and surveys. Make sure that each message includes a call to action. Also, make sure your emails contain back links to your website. This not only helps your customer get to the information they need quickly, but it also improves SEO to your site.
Some of my clients use a monthly e-newsletter to convey an array of information. These are great for several reasons. E-newsletters are often saved, shared and printed for further reading. It also prevents fatiguing your email audience because it contains several messages at once. Finally, you can tease content and draw people to your site. Again, this is great for measurement to gauge what your audience is really interested in.
In conclusion, email marketing campaigns are a great way to promote your product, service or cause to a highly targeted audience. Contact us today to discuss how we can develop a strong email marketing plan to grow your business.
Written by Catherine Page-Creppon, MA, APR
