The power of email is undeniable. Whether you’re using it to follow a company or brand, promote a new product, or just want to keep in touch with friends and family, there’s a good chance you’ve already discovered the many benefits of email marketing.
What sets the good from the average is the level of experience that your team provides for your customers when they engage with your company via email. Your experience should include everything from the welcome email that you send when the customer signs up, all the way through to the end-to-end correspondence that your team provides to the customer. This includes not just the content that you send but also the interactions that you have via email.
Creating an amazing email marketing experience means taking into account a number of key areas. From designing a memorable logo and brand identity through to building out a robust content schedule and responding to potential customer inquiries, this blog post will take you step-by-step through a marketing plan that will help you to create a winning strategy for your company.
Step 1: Create a memorable logo and brand identity
One of the first things that will catch the eye of any potential customer is your logo and brand identity. When designing a new logo and brand identity, you’ll want to pay particular attention to how easy it is to recolor the logo in the event that you decide to go with a palette of two or three basic colors. In addition to this, you should also keep in mind that the logo and brand identity that you create should be able to stand out above the rest, whether it’s in a large type size or on a T-shirt. Finally, you’ll want to make sure that the logo and brand identity that you design is easily memorable so that customers can easily associate your logo with your business.
Step 2: Create compelling content
Creating compelling content is a crucial part of any email marketing campaign. Good content will compel customers to take action and convert them into paying customers or highly-engaged users. The types of content that you will want to create varies but typically sits somewhere between educational content and product/service reviews. While there are numerous tactics that you can use to attract potential customers, including discounts, prizes, and money-back guarantees, solid content is key to converting them into customers.
Step 3: Design a robust content schedule
Having a content schedule is essential. This will help to ensure that you always have content to send out to customers whenever they sign up for your mailing list. You can use a tool like HubSpot to create a content calendar and adhere to it diligently. Designing a content schedule takes a bit of trial and error but with some planning and forethought, you’ll be able to create a solid foundation for an amazing email marketing experience.
Step 4: Identify key contacts
You’ll need to have key contacts at the ready to communicate with whenever you have new content to send out. To start with, you’ll want to identify the decision makers within your target audience and then create a relationship with them. This might mean getting to know them a little bit personally or it could mean targeting individuals based on their position within an organization. Whatever method you choose, make sure that you have a direct contact that can pass on your content whenever it’s ready. The important thing is that you have someone on hand to communicate with when you do have new content to distribute.
Step 5: Measure the success of your email marketing campaign
With all of the different email marketing software out there, it can be tricky to know which one to use for your particular needs. However, the number one factor that you need to focus on when measuring the success of your email marketing campaign is the action that you want your readers to take. While you don’t need to set up any fancy measurements to prove that your campaign was successful, you can simply look at the number of orders that you generate through email as a solid proof of its success. As a general rule of thumb: the more action that you want your readers to take, the more effective your campaign will be.
Step 6: Identify the channels that you’ll use to distribute your content
When designing an email marketing campaign, you’ll want to have the channels that you’ll use to distribute your content in mind from the very beginning. Channels like:
- Social media
- PPC (Pay Per Click)
- Display Advertising
- Text messaging
- Website forums
- Direct Mail
- Word of mouth
… and the list goes on
These are just some of the platforms that you can use to distribute your content. Once you’ve got this part of the process completed, take some time to experiment with different content types and learn from what works and what doesn’t. Then, you can proceed to the next step.