Setting up an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

There are many different stages of email marketing, some companies are in the beginning stages where they will send a weekly or monthly email to their entire customer base and everyone will get the same content.  Ideally, most companies want to get to stages where they can be as relevant as possible so their customers will respond to their email marketing efforts.  This article incorporates important aspects of an email marketing program to make your program not only profitable but also very relevant.

Acquiring Email Addresses

I have learned some lessons on this the hard way.  First of all, it is very important for the sign up form to be prominent and on every page that you can get it on.  I’ve worked on sites that only have a small link at the top of one page which is very ineffective.  Everyone will see different pages so give them the opportunity to sign up wherever they are.  The second lesson I have learned is to keep it as short as possible and ask for more information later.  This really helped me increase the size of our email list.

Double Opt-In

A lot of email marketing providers only require you to use a single opt-in where once the customer provides their email, you can start including them in your program.  However, I have found that if you send them an opt-in email asking them to confirm their sign-up, you have a more responsive list, and also a cleaner list.  Without a double opt-in, you may have a list that includes a lot of bounced emails which can effect your email reputation.

Welcome Series

Once you confirmed sign-up, it is important to welcome your new contacts as soon as possible.  The longest you should go is 24 hours; otherwise they may forget that they had interest in you.  This can either be one email setting expectations of what you have to offer, or a series of emails that may include a discount to get them engaged in what you provide.

Email Newsletter

In my experience a weekly email should be the center of your email marketing efforts.  If you send it more than that, people will tire of you, and any less causes the interest levels to go down.  This newsletter should include news that is relevant to the customer and/or promotional offers that are relevant to them.  The most effective newsletters that I have seen were highly segmented so customers only received information that pertained to them.

Behavioral Emails

Triggered emails are generally set up based on the customer’s behavior.  Some examples of this are cart abandonment emails, post-purchase emails that include promotional offers and opportunities to review products, and emails based on the customers browsing behavior.

Reactivation or Win-Back Emails

There are many levels of engagement that a customer can be in.  One of those levels is a customer who has not opened or clicked and email in certain amount of time.  You can give these customers a steeper offer than usual to see if they will become re-engaged.  It is also a good idea to ask them if they would like to opt-out because this will clean up your list which can increase email reputation.

Another engagement segment is those customers who are still opening emails, but have not purchased in a certain amount of time.  You can send them a “Win-Back” email with a special incentive to try to get them re-engaged.

When implementing both of these offers it is most beneficial to continue to report on these specific segments in order to see if they truly become re-engaged or if it is a one-time purchase.

Opt-Out Process

When one of your customers does decide to opt-out, it is good to have a strategy in place.  It is best to allow them to opt-out of a specific type of email (newsletters vs. promotional), rather than opting out of every email that you have.  If you do have to opt them out of all emails, make sure they are aware of what opting out means.  You also may want to ask them why they are opting out so you can understand if it’s because of irrelevancy, frequency, or other reasons.

Wrapping Up

I hope this has given you a quick overview of the aspects of a good email marketing program.  In the future, I plan to write articles on each of these aspects and go into greater details on specific examples.