Tweet

Developing an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

Written by: Karen Scharf

Article Overview: Email marketing is an excellent tool for growing your customer base, growing your brand and growing your sales. But just like any tool, it's most effective when it's used within a plan. If you started off in email marketing without a clear-cut strategy, here are 4 ways to get back on track by the end of the week.

Developing an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing is an excellent tool for growing your customer base, growing your brand and growing your sales. But just like any tool, it's most effective when it's used within a plan. If you started off in email marketing without a clear-cut strategy, here are 4 ways to get back on track by the end of the week:

Figure out why you're writing.

Do you want your newsletter to be strictly educational? Do you want to share client success stories and case studies? Do you want to introduce joint venture partners? Do you want to announce new products or services? Choose one or a few tactics for your newsletter campaigns and then stick with those tactics. It's important that your readers know what to expect, so be consistent with your style and your content.

Figure out whom you're writing to.

Even though you will have thousands of different names on your mailing list, and even though those readers will all be at different stages in a relationship with your business, and even though they might be at different levels in the buying funnel, you should definitely have your target market profile in mind when you craft your newsletter campaigns.

Your newsletter will never be all things to all people; the most important readers to keep in mind when putting together your newsletter are your customers and those most likely to become your customers. Be prepared for negative feedback from a few readers from time to time. And when it comes, just ask yourself, "Was this person a likely customer?" If not, don't worry about it.

For instance, just last week I received a negative comment from a reader who "reprimanded" me for offering a product for sale in my newsletter. While I love providing free information to my clients and prospects, and I invite every one to stay on my list as long as it takes for them to determine whether or not they'd like to do business with us in some capacity, I'm rarely concerned with the opinions of those who are strictly looking for freebies and will never become clients. While I definitely encourage them to stay on our list, I would not change my strategy to suit them. (Now if a client or prospect had a suggestion about my newsletter, that would be a different story.)

Figure out how often you will send it.

With email marketing, consistency is an important factor, and here's why: When you're inconsistent, your readers might forget who you are and either not open your newsletter or report you as a spammer. When you're inconsistent, your readers learn to live without you, which causes your unsubscribe rate to increase.

And when you have inconsistently high sending spikes associated with your mail server IP address - in other words, you sporadically send a high volume of email messages - your readers' internet providers might consider you a spammer and put a temporary block on your messages. You'll have to contact them through their designated channels and jump through hoops to get the block removed. The best thing to do is determine a sending schedule and stick with it on a regular basis.

Figure out how you will measure success.

If all you're doing is measuring open rates and unsubscribes, you're missing the boat. You need to determine early on the ultimate outcome you're looking for out of your email marketing efforts. If campaign A has 2,000 opens and 10 sales, while campaign B has 750 opens and 30 sales, which campaign will you consider more successful? Will you count all unsubscribes as a failure, or will you consider unsubscribes as an effective way to purge your list of less-than-perfect prospects? How will you take the statistics from current campaigns and use them to improve future campaigns? Having this mapped out ahead of time will make things go much more smoothly when it's actually time to track and measure.

Now wash, rinse, repeat. Email marketing is an extremely effective way to grow your small business, but don't expect miracles overnight. Develop your strategy, stick with it, track and measure along the way and make improvements as necessary. You'll see your business, your branding and your sales increase in very short order.

Related Articles
  Killer Emails For Your "Home Based Online Business Opportunity"
  How to Write an Effective Subject Line
  “Ten Strategic Tips For An Effective Internet Marketing Strategy From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach”
  An Advanced Look at Affiliate Marketing Strategies
  Is There Really A Difference Between Advertising And Marketing?

Article Tags: email campaign, email marketing



Related Forum Posts
Book: Secrets of Six Figure Women - Secrets of Six Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to up your earning and change your life Barbara Stanny, 2002 Jacket: Maybe you've noticed - a subtle trend is gathering steam. Quietly and steadily, the number of women making six figures or more is increasing, and it continues to rise at a rate faster than for men. From entrepreneurs to corporate executives, from white collar executives to free lancers and part timers, women are forging careers with considerable financial success. Through extensive research and hundreds of interviews, including dialogs with more than 150 high earners whose annual incomes range from $100,000 to 7 million, Stanny discovered that ...they all had certain traits in common: 1) a profit motive 2) Audacity 3) REslience 4) Encouragement 5) Self-awareness 6) Non-attachment 7) Financial knowhow She amplifies on these in the book itself. Table of Contents Intro: Welcome to the era of the six-figure woman 1. The Queen in the Countinghouse 2. The Lowdown on low earners 3. Raising the bar 4. Strategy 1: The Declaration of Intention 5. Strategy 2: Letting go of the ledge 6. Strategy 3: Get in the Game 7. Strategy 4: Speak Up 8. Strategy 5: The Stretch 9. Strategy 6: Seek Support 10. Strategy 7: Obey the rules of money 11. Claiming our power Appendces: Resources and websites Tips for getting out of dent Investing Basics: Wealthbuilding 101
niche forum categories - I think Kevin just touched on the point that I was going make... and that is developing 'categories' that stick. Sales and Marketing may be too broad for example. However I can almost guarantee you that you would see many more sign-ups if you tailored a category to 'internet marketing' for newbies. I've seen this work on other forums, however, [i:1i903wkn]it can get a little frantic[/i:1i903wkn]... Fine tuning the categories, or expanding the scope should be effective. I think a lot of IM folks are surfing right on by because they're not finding what they're looking for here... Just a few thoughts: Better Blogging Developing Info Products Internet Marketing Presentation Skills More How to's Another point is... a lot of people don't know that they can benefit from participating in forums. The signature links to their site - if they have one - can / should be motivation enough to get more involved. The more internet savvy members that have signatures seem to stick around more... Don't you think?
Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategy - [quote="jennysmith14":2wxugq3d]Hello Friends.......... Best Internet Marketing Strategy are # Start with a web promotion plan and an effective web design and development strategy. # Get ranked at the top in major search engines, and practice good Search Optimization Techniques. # Learn to use Email Marketing Effectively. # Dominate your marketing niche with affiliate, reseller, and associate programs. # Request an analysis from an Internet marketing coach or Internet marketing consultant. # Build a responsive opt-in email list.[/quote:2wxugq3d] Hi Jenny, All good valid advice here to readers. The one thing I might add for clarification to readers is on point number 4 concerning "dominating" search results. I always like to clarify the importance of dominating for a variety of well researched keyword phrases that ideally target your ideal buying audience. Sometimes people misunderstand and think the objective is too dominate all top 10 spots for the same keyword. The reason this is not wise is that anyone successfully dominating all top 10 spots may actually be reported to Google Abuse because the purpose of a search engine is to display a variety of choices. Competitors can become quite upset with a company who is dominating all top 10 spots for the same phrase. I realize you know this already, but just thought I'd throw it in for anyone new to SEO. A better way to "dominate" is for a variety of very well researched phrases to pull in multiple audiences of readers. Great post Jenny. Thanks
Re: My 3 best business books - 1. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill 2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey 3. Permission Marketing - Seth Godin Think and Grow Rich seems more powerful each time I read it or dip into it. The 7 Habits not only offers some very effective ways to organize your life (which I have yet to master!), but also some great quotations and thought provoking statements including this by Nazi concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl: [i:2naxzsom]Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.[/i:2naxzsom] Seth Godin's Permission Marketing is a good read for anybody seeking to understand how to approach doing business on the Internet in the right way with regard to winning people's trust.
Re: Email marketing strategy - Email Marketing is successful only when you get a good list of targeted people. However, some people consider it as spam. It can work wonders for you if you have selected the appropriate list of people.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Five Ways to Show Honest Appreciation

Sales Flubs

The Importance of Master Data Management (MDM)

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.