You can launch a regular email marketing campaign, use the random titles and subjects, get the clicks, and even sell the products. However, you will never build a sustainable business growth without a clear strategy.

An email marketing strategy includes two primary steps: the goals to achieve with the email marketing, and actions needed to achieve these goals.

Set the goals

We highlight 3 main directions to set the goals:

  1. Website traffic and leads from the emails.
  2. Brand trust – open the customers’ eyes to the fact that your company is good at a specific line of work.
  3. Brand awareness and audience loyalty, e.g., increase the number of references to your company.

Let’s see the detailed examples:

  • Reduce the cost of paid traffic by increasing the free website redirects by 20%.
  • Increase the number of repeat purchasing by 10% due to customer retention.
  • Increase the number of paid customers by 15% with retargeting.

Developing an email marketing strategy from scratch is tough when determining exact numbers. However, it is significant to set a particular vector of marketing.

Define the target audience

To build long-term trust with the audience, you need to know your customers well.

  • Age, country, the approximate level of income.
  • Fears, pains, and needs.
  • Buyers’ journey (how the customers take a decision, how often they buy).

Create profiles of your clients and add them to a separate document. Each time when you need to set marketing campaigns (not only email), you can always see the profiles in the document.

Note: We, on Short.cm, are using Notion.so for marketing and analytical needs. You can create additional lines to add necessary data.

Competitor analysis

The target audience is clearly defined, so now you need to learn what the competitors offer. To do this, subscribe to their email campaigns, get acquainted with their sites and pages on social networks. Then jot down all the essential data into a comparison table.

What to include to the table?

  • Examples of headings, descriptions, and CTA buttons from the email subscription form.
  • How competitors guarantee data privacy.
  • A summary of what happens after the successful form filling.
  • How frequently competitors send emails (e.g., what triggers are used).
  • The subject lines and CTAs from the emails.

Ways to attract subscribers

At this stage, decide where to get traffic and how to attract subscribers. The competitor analysis is useful on this stage.

There are many ways to attract users to subscribe to. For example:

  1. Send a useful book, checklist or free online course after subscription.
  2. Set up a subscription popup for those who’ve read 50% of the page.
  3. Launch a discount campaign.

Define the type of content

The type of content depends on the project. Some projects need to mail only promotions, as subscribers are not interested in something else. Other projects won’t increase the open rate without the news emails, especially if the topic is controversial.

Email creation

When creating an email, you need to rely on data about the audience, take some competitors' features, and, of course, build your own tests.

Important: Follow the primary rules while creating an email in order not to get blacklisted.

Stop doing these things in email marketing

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What did you learn?

  • Email marketing.
  • The advantages of using short links in email marketing.
  • How to increase the open rate.
  • Ways to develop email marketing strategy.
  • How to start email marketing campaign.

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