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Master the Inbox With the Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing Strategy
A Definitive Handbook for Growing Your Brand Through the Inbox
Megan Smith
January 18th, 2024
Table of Contents
Every email marketing service has a blog article about email marketing strategy.
What makes this one different?
It combines everything I've learned from years of digital marketing — particularly in the email arena — with lessons I have learned from reading science fiction.
Space battles and galactic wars taught me about the difference between strategy and tactics. Strategies win wars. Tactics win battles.
I don't suggest treating your email marketing as a war, and I strongly advise against treating your audience as your enemy.
But the best marketing campaigns blend holistic strategy with the latest email marketing tools and tactics, and they take advantage of email's particular strengths as a channel and harness it for their brand.
Sending emails to prospects and customers is a direct and personalized way of communicating your brand message, promoting your products or services, and building customer loyalty.
It's one of the most valuable forms of digital marketing available to you.
Here's how to master it with the skill and rigor of a general commanding interplanetary troops.
Understanding Email Marketing Strategy
An email marketing strategy is an integral part of a brand's overall marketing plan. Let's start with some key definitions, benefits, and elements.
Defining Email Marketing Strategy
An email marketing strategy is a high-level, long-term plan that outlines how email will be used to support your brand objectives and overall marketing goals. It’s a blueprint that helps you build strong relationships with your audience, nurture leads, and drive conversions.
Defining Email Marketing Tactics and Tools
On the other hand, I think of email marketing tactics as more specific actions and email resources. They reflect and implement your email marketing strategy.
For example, strong subject lines are a crucial tactic based on a solid strategy for engagement.
Understanding the "why" behind general best practices keeps you agile in an ever-evolving field.
Your email marketing strategy should also guide your selection of the best email newsletter services and other marketing software.
What features matter most to you? Do you need a full customer relationship management (CRM) service or other specialty tool?
The Importance of a Clear Email Marketing Strategy
A clear email marketing strategy ensures that your effort aligns with your overall goals, providing a consistent experience for your audience and maximizing the return on your investment.
Its absence can lead to disjointed communication, missed opportunities, and wasted resources. Don't miss out on this powerful channel's potential for reliable and individual communications.
Unlike social media marketing, which relies on algorithms to display your content, email marketing ensures that your message reaches your audience directly in their inbox. You can also tailor your message to each recipient, addressing them by name and providing relevant content.
7 Key Steps To Create an Effective Email Marketing Strategy
The best strategy for your brand is custom-made for your audience and objectives.
For some of these elements, your best email marketing strategy should match that of the next person. For others, it shouldn't. Email deliverability best practices are standard. Audiences aren't.
Use these components to articulate your strategy, optimize the channel, and use email to achieve your brand goals. Think about them as you're choosing your email tools and developing your campaigns.
1. Define Clear Objectives.
The first step in crafting an email marketing strategy is to define your objectives. What do you aim to achieve with your email campaigns? Why? How will this contribute to your overall success?
Individual campaigns will require more specific objectives, but identify guiding principles for content creation and brand growth.
2. Understand Your Audience.
Knowing your audience is at the core of any successful marketing strategy. Understand their needs, preferences, and pain points.
Develop detailed customer personas that represent all segments of your audience. For example, a clothing brand might sell attire for children as well as adults, but the best messaging for parents looking for onesies won't match the content for professionals looking for blazers.
The more you know about your audience, the more effectively you can tailor your email content to resonate with them.
3. Create Consistent, Value-Driven Content.
Your emails should provide value to the recipient, helping you build trust and loyalty across campaigns.
Effective email content comes in various forms. Some examples include exclusive offers, helpful tips or resources, news and updates, or entertaining features.
Whatever the content, keep your branding elements and personality consistent across campaigns and channels.
A brand style guide outlines the most important features of your aesthetic and written material. Create one to improve brand awareness and recognition across channels.
5. Maximize Deliverability, Accessibility, and Optimization.
Email marketing success depends on your audience receiving your emails and interacting with them in the manner you intend.
With the majority of people accessing emails on their mobile devices, it's crucial to ensure that your emails look good on all screen sizes. This includes using responsive design, optimizing images, and creating short subject lines that display fully.
Ensure that your emails are accessible to all recipients, regardless of any assistive technologies. Easy-to-read fonts and logical structure also improve inclusivity as well as the overall user experience.
Finally, you should abide by deliverability best practices. Email compliance and hygiene should never be sacrificed for a fun campaign idea.
5. Segment and Personalize Email.
Don't treat your audience like a singular being. (They are not part of a sci-fi hive mind. You may be a space commander, but they are not the Borg.)
Segment your email list to allow for more targeted content. Decide on the factors you'll use to create groups. What are the most useful distinctions for your brand and this channel?
Today's consumers also demand a high level of personalization.
Automation enables you to respond to and customize messages for each subscriber. You can send targeted, timely messages without having to manually draft and send each email.
6. Let the Data Drive Your Decisions.
Data-driven email marketing works. Make A/B testing and performance tracking key parts of your email operations.
Identify and monitor the metrics that matter most to your objectives in your analytics dashboard. By letting your audience tell you what's working for them, you can refine your strategy over time.
7. Build Your List.
High-level email marketing strategy should also incorporate strategies to capture email addresses. How do you intend to grow and increase the reach and power of your email marketing?
Focus on attracting people who are genuinely interested in your brand or product. You might offer valuable content in exchange for their email address, such as a free e-book or a discount code.
Easy sign-up forms should be accessible through all your channels, and features such as pop-ups help call attention to them.
Referral programs and lead-form ads are also effective for many brands.
The Role of Email Marketing in Business Growth
Why should you implement these strategies? Email marketing drives business growth, providing advantages that can take your brand to the next level.
Growth factors include:
Reduced marketing costs: Email marketing is incredibly cost-effective. There are no printing costs, no postage fees, and you can reach a wider audience in a shorter amount of time.
Increased sales: Email marketing allows businesses to reach out to customers directly in response to their immediate interests.
Improved customer loyalty: Regular, value-laden emails help keep your brand at the top of customers' minds and build strong, lasting relationships.
Altogether, these combine to create the highest return on investment (ROI) of any marketing channel. The average ROI is $36 for every dollar spent, and that number climbs to $45 in the retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods industries.
Strategy-Driven Email Marketing Campaigns
You can achieve various business objectives with email marketing, depending on the campaigns you create. Each of these email marketing types serves a distinct purpose.
Different Types of Email Marketing
Most email campaigns fall under one of the following categories, and most successful brands employ more than one type of email marketing. Your next message could take any of these forms.
Create a custom newsletter for your brand.
Newsletters are a great way to keep your audience engaged and maintain a steady line of communication, consistently delivering value to your audience. They can serve a variety of business objectives and make a great addition to your customer retention strategy.
Some of the most popular content ideas for newsletters include:
Company news and updates: Share the latest updates about your company or industry, such as new product releases, partnerships, or awards.
Blog posts: Highlight the month's most popular blog posts or direct people to posts relevant to their interests.
Educational content: Provide useful tips, guides, or how-to's related to your product or service.
Employee spotlights: Showcase your team members to humanize your brand and create a personal connection with your audience.
Testimonials or case studies: Share success stories from satisfied customers.
Charitable endeavors: Share any philanthropic activities or corporate social responsibility initiatives.
Promotional Emails
These emails drive revenue. They aim to encourage purchases by announcing a sale, upcoming event, or new offer. The goal is to capture immediate customer attention, stimulate demand, and compel direct action.
Common promotions include:
Sales: An email promoting a seasonal sale such as a summer clearance event or holiday shopping deals can attract customers looking for discounts during specific times of the year. Flash sales — short-term sales that offer substantial discounts — are particularly effective. The limited time frame encourages immediate action.
Product launches: Emails unveiling a new product or service can pique the interest of subscribers, particularly if it's a much-awaited release. You might also show off limited edition products or warn your audience about dwindling availability.
Discount codes: Exclusive discount codes for subscribers incentivize purchases and remind subscribers why they joined your list.
VIP offers or programs: Create a loyalty program and provide VIPs with special offers. You can reward customer loyalty while encouraging people to deepen their commitment to your brand.
Event promotions: Get the word out with invitations and announcements of upcoming events. Use email to boost event attendance and engagement at webinars, demonstrations, or customer-appreciation events.
Transactional Emails:
Transactional emails are triggered by customer interactions (transactions) with your business. They build trust with your customers by demonstrating your commitment to transparency and customer care.
You might send:
Order confirmation emails: These emails provide customers with details about their recent purchase, including an order number, a summary of the order, and shipment details.
Shipping notification emails: These emails are sent to update customers about the status of their order and typically include tracking information and the estimated delivery date.
Abandoned cart emails: When customers add items to their shopping cart but don't complete the purchase, these emails serve as a reminder, encouraging them to finalize their order. They have an exceptionally high average conversion rate.
Password reset emails: If a user forgets their account password, this email enables them to establish a new one.
Account notification emails: These emails alert customers about changes to their accounts.
Renewal or subscription reminder emails: These are sent to customers to remind them about an upcoming renewal or expiration of a service or subscription.
Appointment reminder emails: These are sent to remind users of upcoming appointments they've booked.
Transactional emails have some of the highest open and click-through rates – even more of an incentive to keep customers happy and well-informed.
This makes transactional emails an excellent opportunity for upselling or cross-selling. For instance, an e-commerce store might include complementary product recommendations in their order confirmation emails.
Autoresponders
Transactional emails are often, but not always automated. Autoresponders send emails when triggered by user actions or the sudden relevance of your stored information about them (such as a birthday).
Use them to create:
Welcome emails: Send out welcome emails when a new user signs up for your service or joins your mailing list. They set the tone for your relationship and are an opportunity to get subscribers excited about what you have to offer.
Birthday or anniversary discounts: Personalized emails offering discounts or freebies on a customer's birthday or account anniversary can make customers feel special and appreciated, encouraging further engagement with your brand.
Follow-up emails: These emails are sent after a purchase or an event and typically ask for feedback or for the customer to provide additional information regarding the use or maintenance of the product or service.
Content-interaction emails: These emails are activated by a user's specific engagement with your content, such as visiting a particular page on your website or clicking on a link in an email.
Re-engagement emails: A re-engagement campaign targets subscribers who have become inactive over time and offers special promotions or asks if they still want to remain on your list.
Automate and optimize your email marketing. Autoresponders provide interactive, personalized engagement, allowing you to provide seamless and timely communication in direct response to customer behavior.
Drip Campaign Emails
These emails aim to build a relationship with audience members over time through a series of emails linked by a particular theme. You can create a drip campaign for many of the above types, such as an onboarding welcome series.
Email nurture campaigns help you turn prospects into customers. Drip campaigns also work well as a form of lead nurturing. For instance, if a customer downloads a free guide from your website, you can send them a series of emails with related content and offers to keep them engaged and build trust.
Benefits of Diversifying Email Marketing Types
By leveraging different types of email marketing, businesses can cater to various customer needs and stages in the buying process.
For example, the email marketing strategy for an Etsy business might lead to promotional emails for deals, transactional emails for order updates, and personalized newsletters featuring product recommendations.
How To Create Strategic Email Campaigns
The best email marketing strategy will allow you to master email marketing campaigns of all kinds and incorporate them into your larger marketing initiatives.
Plan Your Campaign
Use your email campaigns to supplement your audience's experience with your brand and drive the actions that matter to your success.
Define Your Campaign
Identify your campaign goals, audience, and type. What specific action do you want to drive with this particular campaign? Should you send it to everyone or only a segment of your audience?
Figure out the type of content you want to send. You can use data from previous campaigns and other marketing to discover the content and frequency that resonates with audience segments.
Schedule Your Campaign
Use your email marketing tool to schedule campaigns in advance. Create an email content calendar to ensure consistency, maintain a balanced content mix, and align email with other marketing campaigns.
Account for key dates and seasonal shifts that you want to incorporate into your content.
Create Your Content
Once your campaign is planned, it's time to develop your emails. Keep the following email marketing best practices in mind.
Compelling Subject Lines
Your subject line is the first thing recipients see, so make it count. Strong subject lines are catchy and concise.
They should also accurately represent the email content. Make sure that the core value proposition of any email is readily apparent.
Personalization
Address recipients by their first name and send them material relevant to their interests. You can use dynamic content to automatically tailor sections of your email based on subscriber data.
Visual Appeal
An attractive email design can significantly enhance user experience. Create an appealing layout and incorporate high-quality images.
Scannable Content
Most people skim through emails, and many read them on mobile devices. Break up your content into short paragraphs and use subheadings, bullet points, or numbered lists to make your emails easy to scan. Highlight key points or offers, so they stand out.
Strong Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
Your CTA tells recipients what you want them to do next. The best CTAs are clear, concise, and compelling. Use action-oriented language and make your CTA button visually prominent.
Execute and Optimize Your Campaign
To ensure that your campaigns are driving the desired results, you need to test content, track their performance, analyze the data, and make actionable changes.
Start by sending test emails that allow you to preview your email on different devices.
Before broadly sending, you can also conduct A/B tests to refine elements of your campaign. This could involve testing different subject lines, email designs, CTAs, or send times.
Once you've published your campaign, use your email marketing tool to track your key metrics and identify trends you can apply to the next send.
Email Strategy in Action: Best Email Marketing Examples
The numbers prove the value of the channel, but email marketing case studies prove the value of a sound email marketing strategy.
The Campaigner: Matt McGarry
Matt McGarry is an expert in the newsletter business. He runs an agency called GrowLetter and regularly publishes issues of The Newsletter Operator.
But some of his most impressive recent success results from his achievements as a beehiiv affiliate. In addition to developing an impressive stream of revenue, McGarry even won a luxury vacation as the top-earning affiliate.
How did he do it?
McGarry's promotional campaigns offered limited-time giveaways, including a free consultation, and convinced his readers to take action. Second-quarter sales skyrocketed.
While his newsletter success has depended on organic growth, as an affiliate, McGarry identified the freebies most likely to appeal to his particular audience. Then, he added the magic ingredients: urgency and exclusivity.
The Educator: Jennifer Chou
Jennifer Chou of EntryLevel created a newsletter to complement the online courses offered by her company. LevelUp also serves as an engine for lead generation. According to Jennifer, "As soon as they give us their email and sign up, we have a whole marketing funnel for them."
But the heart of the brand's strategy is thought leadership and value-rich content, which has led to substantial organic growth.
"We have people who are huge fans of us because of our newsletter, but they've never bought a course with us before. They're always promoting our courses to their friends because they're like, ‘These people know what they're doing because of the thought leadership in the newsletter.’"
Exceptional, educational content took LevelUp to more than 60,000 subscribers in its very first year.
The Artist: Sam Ryan
Fine artist Sam Ryan has used email marketing to double his monthly revenue. His email marketing strategy allows him to move more big-ticket paintings and develop the prints most likely to sell.
An older, more affluent audience looks forward to Ryan's content. The more professional nature of email back-and-forths increases the likelihood of conversion. Ryan feels that "a newsletter reinforces the artwork’s worth, its value."
He also takes advantage of beehiiv's interactive content features such as native one-click polls to decide which prints to drop.
“I'm painting all throughout the year. I’m putting out the best work that I can, and I'm letting them choose what they want to buy. Instead of, ‘I have these available for sale. Hopefully, you buy one,’ they're telling me what they're going to buy in the future.”
Email has helped Ryan develop his brand as a serious artist and sell more.
The Future of Email Marketing Strategy
What is the strategy of email marketing for tomorrow? The core principles don't change — at least, not quickly — but evolving trends and technologies will affect email content and delivery.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is already revolutionizing email marketing by personalizing emails at scale and automating email campaigns. It can analyze vast amounts of data to understand user behavior and preferences, enabling marketers to send highly personalized emails that resonate with each subscriber.
Generative AI for email also helps with content creation, allowing you to produce more efficiently.
Interactive Email Content
The future of email content is interactive. Think surveys, quizzes, image carousels, and shoppable product listings.
This interactivity not only engages subscribers but also keeps them within the email longer, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Look for increasing email gamification — the use of features that require engagement to continue the in-email journey. Easy examples include wheels of fortune and click-to-reveal objects.
Stricter Privacy Regulations
With rising consumer concerns over data privacy, deliverability best practices will become even more crucial.
Marketers will need to focus on maintaining a clean email list, establishing their email reputation, and staying compliant to ensure that their emails reach their subscribers' inboxes.
Learn about the latest email security rules from Google and Yahoo, and keep yourself informed of developments.
Develop Your Email Marketing Strategy on beehiiv
Email marketing remains an essential cornerstone of brand communication across industries. Put the key steps of an email marketing strategy into practice and integrate various types of campaigns.
Never lose sight of your objectives or your audience and never subordinate core strategy to tactics or techniques. If you want to level up your email marketing, you have to think at a high level.
That's how you achieve newsletter success.
Sign up for a free beehiiv account to get started with email marketing.
Why Trust Us
I’ve spent the last five years developing expertise and bylines related to email and other forms of content marketing. As for beehiiv, it’s a successful email platform built by creators for creators.
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