It’s now 2024, and social media has emerged as the dominant marketing channel. However, email marketing continues to thrive and deliver excellent results.
According to HubSpot’s recent report, a staggering 95% of marketers believe that their email marketing strategies have effectively met their business objectives.
Of course, this success hinges on executing email marketing correctly. An effective strategy demands thorough research, meticulous planning, and extensive testing.
In light of this, we’ve crafted a practical guide on email marketing strategy. We’ll delve into key definitions, provide real-world examples, offer insights on strategy development, and supplement it all with our own experiences and findings.
What is email marketing strategy?
Email marketing strategy refers to a collection of tactics utilized by marketers to effectively target the appropriate audience with relevant content. This approach streamlines the process of understanding user preferences, analyzing industry best practices, and delivering content that drives revenue growth.
Think of it like embarking on a journey to an unfamiliar destination. You have a specific endpoint in mind, but without a map, the likelihood of getting lost increases significantly. However, with a carefully planned route, you can efficiently reach your destination.
Similarly, an email marketing strategy serves as your predetermined path to achieving marketing campaign objectives.
In broad terms, email marketing can be categorized as either inbound or outbound.
Inbound email marketing focuses on individuals who are already subscribed to your email list. These individuals have demonstrated interest in your product or service by signing up or making purchases. The objective of inbound marketing is to convert these interested users into paying customers.
On the other hand, outbound email marketing targets potential customers who may fit your ideal client profile. The aim is to introduce your brand and attract new customers. Outbound email marketing strategies revolve around addressing three key questions: who, what, and how.
Typically, outbound email marketing is associated with sales efforts, whereas inbound email marketing is primarily utilized by marketers. Therefore, in the upcoming blog post, we will primarily discuss strategies for inbound email marketing.
4 Examples of Email Marketing Strategies
To illustrate the concept of email marketing strategy, we’ve curated four examples of email marketing campaigns that either successfully achieve or fall short of their SMART goals.
Throughout our discussion of each example, we’ll focus on two primary criteria: the relevance of the campaign to its target audience and the specific email marketing tactics employed.
Netflix’s primary email marketing strategy revolves around data-driven personalization. They leverage user data, including viewing habits, patterns, browsing behavior, and preferred genres, to tailor the content of their emails. This personalized approach gives users the impression that each email is specifically crafted for them.
Furthermore, Netflix ensures that their email recommendations are relevant without overwhelming users’ inboxes with spam. The overarching objective of this strategy is to re-engage users who may be less active.
Here are the positive aspects of the example mentioned:
1. The email content is personalized to reflect users’ viewing history and habits.
2. Recommendations are backed by research data.
3. The campaign targets a specific audience segment: individuals aged 18 to 34.
4. Effective email marketing tactics include clear call-to-action buttons, well-organized headers, episode links, and a mobile-friendly layout.
However, some areas could be improved:
- The extensive use of user data by Netflix may raise privacy concerns.
In 2019, Twitch, a leading streaming platform, made its debut in the marketing realm with its inaugural campaign. Around 2020, they expanded their marketing efforts to include email marketing with the introduction of yearly recap campaigns.
Following a strategy akin to Netflix, Twitch employed personalization tactics to foster a deeper connection with their audience. The primary objective was to enhance the community spirit and express gratitude for their ongoing support.
Upon initial inspection, the email appears to be well-crafted, providing statistics and detailing how one of the creators spent their year with Twitch. Here are some positive aspects of the campaign:
– The content resonates with the target demographic, with 70% falling between ages 18 and 34.
– The content, particularly the stats, is tailored to the individual streamer.
– Twitch employs effective tactics like concise messaging, consistent branding, mobile-friendly design, and optimized subject lines.
However, despite these strengths, the campaign faced significant backlash for two main reasons:
1. Twitch did not clearly communicate to users that subscription to marketing emails was necessary for receiving recaps. This information was only clarified after users voiced their dissatisfaction, leading many to feel excluded and let down.
2. The email content did not meet users’ expectations for recaps. Instead of precise numbers like watch time, users received general statistics such as earned channel points, top watched categories, and top watched channels. Furthermore, users found inaccuracies in the provided statistics.
Here are some drawbacks of the campaign:
– Twitch failed to adequately inform users about the subscription requirement.
– The campaign relied on superficial personalization.
– User expectations and preferences were not thoroughly researched.
Uber is a brand known for its extensive use of email marketing, sending a variety of emails including both non-promotional and promotional content. These emails range from updates on new features to discounts, special offers, and coupon codes. Uber strategically employs email marketing to boost sales, showcase new offerings, and maintain engagement with their audience.
Here are the positive aspects of this campaign:
– It follows a consistent schedule and utilizes clear call-to-action buttons.
– The content is tailored to the target audience, offering value by demonstrating Uber’s usefulness during the holiday season.
– The email content is concise, catering to recipients who may have limited time to spare.
Areas for improvement include:
– Lack of personalization in the campaign.
– The use of a GIF background, which may not render correctly in all email clients.
Email marketing strategy vs. tactics
Email marketing strategy is often misconstrued with tactics or methods. When seeking effective email marketing strategies, search results often focus on optimizing subject lines, creating mobile-friendly layouts, segmenting subscriber lists, sending personalized messages, and more.
However, these are simply tactics. While valuable in execution, they do not constitute the strategy itself. The strategy is the overarching plan implemented to accomplish specific goals.
The primary elements of an Email Marketing Strategy
An email marketing strategy comprises four main components: identifying the problem, gathering raw data, formulating solutions, and creating a roadmap for implementation.
Identifying the problem:
Identifying the problem involves recognizing the challenges your product or service currently faces. This could range from issues like a lack of trust, fierce competition in the market, or insufficient brand awareness. It’s crucial to clearly define the problem at the outset of your strategy.
Raw Data:
The research and raw data phase entails conducting thorough research to understand your target audience’s perceptions, as well as analyzing your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. This may involve customer development processes, surveys, and exploring online platforms for user feedback.
Formulating Solutions:
The solutions component outlines how you plan to address each identified problem. For instance, if trust is an issue, solutions may include gathering testimonials from satisfied customers or creating educational content to enhance brand awareness.
Creating a Roadmap
Finally, the roadmap lays out the steps for implementing these solutions. This includes detailing the actions required for executing each solution, such as running survey email campaigns or creating case studies for corporate clients. Additionally, the roadmap should include a schedule for email content and marketing campaign deployment.
Why is email marketing strategy important?
There are several compelling reasons why email marketing strategy is crucial:
1. Integral to the marketing funnel: Email marketing plays a pivotal role in the marketing funnel by allowing marketers to tailor their approach to users at different stages of their journey. For instance, new subscribers may receive informational newsletters and onboarding guides to bolster brand awareness, while tactics may evolve as users progress through the funnel.
2. Audience-centric approach: A well-defined email marketing strategy hinges on a deep understanding of the target audience, enabling marketers to create tailored content that aligns with their interests, habits, and preferences. This results in fewer spam complaints, enhanced email deliverability, and increased click-through rates (CTR).
3. High ROI potential: By adhering to a meticulously crafted plan grounded in research data, email marketing campaigns stand a strong chance of delivering a high return on investment (ROI). This is attributable to the strategic deployment of resources and efforts, leading to the attainment of desired outcomes.
Despite its numerous benefits, email marketing strategy may not be suitable for everyone, as it comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| 1. Cost-effective with high ROI: Email marketing is relatively inexpensive and boasts the highest return on investment (ROI) compared to other marketing channels. Depending on the industry, ROI can range from $36 to $45. An effective strategy can further enhance these numbers. | 1. Costly and labor-intensive: Developing and executing an effective email marketing strategy requires additional resources, such as hiring an experienced marketer and occasionally seeking help from external consultants. |
| 2. Complementary to content marketing: Email marketing can be seamlessly integrated with a content marketing strategy or substituted for it altogether, enhancing overall marketing efforts. | 2. Time gap between investment and revenue: There is often a lag between the initial investment in email marketing and the realization of revenue, requiring patience and long-term commitment. |
| 3. Aligned with Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) research: Email marketing strategies can be tailored to align with the overall Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) of a business, ensuring targeted and effective communication with the intended audience. | 3. Time-consuming testing process and adoption: The testing and optimization process in email marketing can be time-consuming, requiring iterative adjustments and experimentation to achieve desired results. |
| 4. Facilitates audience understanding and consistency: Email marketing helps marketers gain valuable insights into their audience and maintain consistency across all marketing channels, fostering stronger brand engagement. | 4. Not suitable for niche audiences: Email marketing may not be effective for companies with highly specialized or niche target audiences, as it may struggle to resonate with such specific demographics. |
In addition to considering the advantages and disadvantages, it’s crucial to assess whether email marketing aligns with your business goals and target audience. While it’s often utilized by companies seeking broader reach and increased conversions, it may not be suitable for everyone.
For businesses already active in other digital channels, email marketing can serve as a complementary tool, enhancing campaign results through synergies with social media or advertising efforts.
Smaller businesses, in particular, may find email marketing to be a primary channel due to its high ROI and relatively low resource requirements compared to paid advertising.
However, for companies catering to niche audiences, email marketing may not be effective. Certain demographics, such as developers, may be averse to marketing emails, leading to high spam complaint rates and diminished campaign effectiveness. In such cases, alternative marketing channels may yield better results.
Types of email marketing strategy
Depending on the size of your business and your objectives, your email marketing strategy may vary. Additionally, different tactics may be employed depending on the various stages of the customer journey. Let’s categorize email marketing strategies based on business size and user trigger campaigns.
Email Marketing Strategies for Different Business Sizes
Small Businesses:
For small businesses, hyper-personalized campaigns may not be feasible due to limited resources. Instead, focus on building a loyal customer community through exceptional customer experiences. Utilize email marketing for referral programs, offering incentives for both customers and the business. This approach fosters word-of-mouth marketing and is particularly beneficial for beginners and freelancers.
Tech Startups:
Tech startups thrive on experimentation. Embrace invite-only, exclusivity-centered marketing strategies to generate virality. OnePlus successfully employed this tactic during its smartphone launch, selling over 1.5 million phones within a year. Confidence in your product is crucial for this strategy to succeed.
Midsize Businesses and Service Companies:
Follow industry best practices but customize them to suit your unique business needs. Treat suggested tips as guidelines and adjust them according to your brand identity and audience preferences.
Email Marketing Strategies for Re-engagement Campaigns:
Re-engagement campaigns target inactive subscribers and require a tailored approach. Optimize email subject lines and offer special incentives to reignite interest. Consider providing different subscription options or introducing new products or features to capture attention. Research the reasons for disengagement and adjust your strategy accordingly. Send multiple follow-up emails before removing inactive subscribers from your list.
Email Marketing Strategy for Cart Abandonment Campaigns:
Cart abandonment campaigns aim to prompt users to complete their purchase after leaving items in their cart. A simple reminder may not suffice, so emphasize product value through testimonials and reviews. Incorporate loyalty programs and leverage FOMO to encourage action. Offer incentives like discounts or free shipping to entice customers to complete their purchase.
How to create an Email Marketing Strategy
As previously discussed, developing an email marketing strategy is a complex process that involves multiple steps. Below, we’ve outlined the fundamental steps essential for crafting a strategy.
It’s important to note that the specifics of each step will vary based on your objectives, industry, and target audience. Therefore, it’s crucial to tailor the process to fit your unique circumstances.
1. Determine the strategy goal
What are your objectives with email marketing? Are you looking to enhance engagement among your current customers, raise brand awareness, or drive more conversions?
Determining the goal of your email marketing efforts will shape the entire framework of your strategy.
However, it’s crucial to maintain realistic expectations. For new businesses, achieving immediate success without the assistance of email marketing strategy consultants or dedicated teams can be challenging. Therefore, anticipate that your initial campaign may not deliver optimal results.
Moreover, generating a return on investment (ROI) requires patience, even for established brands that allocate significant resources to their email marketing endeavors.
2. Build the buyer persona
The subsequent step involves constructing the buyer persona, which entails crafting a fictional representation of your ideal customer grounded in their purchasing behaviors.
For instance, if your business specializes in stationery items, you might develop buyer personas such as “Writer Oliver” and “Teenager Sally.” Writer Oliver is a loyal customer who frequently purchases your new products, whereas Teenager Sally, constrained by limited funds, only makes purchases during sales events or when affordable and appealing pencils are released.
These personas serve as valuable tools for tailoring personalized email campaigns to specific audience segments.
However, if your business offers services, your email marketing strategy may pivot towards your overall Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) research. In this scenario, you’ll create profiles for companies rather than individuals. For instance:
SaaS companies and startups based in Europe that have secured funding but encounter challenges in data analytics.
3. Look into the previous emails that worked well
By delving into the analysis of your previous successful emails, you can uncover valuable insights that inform future strategies. Rather than solely scrutinizing the content of the emails, it’s essential to examine every aspect comprehensively.
Evaluate the effectiveness of various subject lines and replicate successful tactics during subsequent testing phases (further elaborated below). Assess the email designs that resonated with your audience. Did they engage more with image-heavy or responsive formats? Did HTML content garner greater interaction? All these aspects should be scrutinized through data analysis and basic metrics. Pay close attention to spam complaints and their relationship with design elements.
If subscribers are prone to marking certain design types as spam, opting for a plain text format might yield better results. When selecting a design, also consider the email clients used by your target audience. Note that HTML or interactive designs may not be compatible with all mailbox providers. Utilize this information for list segmentation purposes to ensure optimal email rendering across all recipients.
4. Research your competitors’ emails and their audience
Examining competitors’ emails can offer valuable insights. By analyzing whom they target and how they do it, you can gain inspiration for your own strategy, especially if your target audience overlaps with theirs.
However, it’s crucial to view competitors’ approaches as sources of inspiration rather than strict templates. While learning from their methods, ensure to tailor them to suit your product, business, and specific goals. This customization will help differentiate your strategy and better resonate with your audience.
5. Conduct A/B testing
A/B testing, also known as split testing, involves systematically testing different elements of your emails to determine which variations perform better. For instance, if conducting A/B testing on subject lines, different subject lines are used in separate emails sent to predetermined subscriber groups. The subject line that yields better performance becomes the preferred choice.
This testing method extends to various components such as pre-headers, email bodies, calls to action (CTAs), links, and email templates. Essentially, almost every aspect of your email can undergo A/B testing. It’s essential to ensure that the testing options significantly differ from one another.
By conducting A/B testing, you gain insights into what resonates best with your audience before rolling out to a broader audience. It’s a pivotal part of experimentation, allowing you to refine and optimize your email marketing strategy based on data-driven insights.
Important Email Marketing tips to keep in mind
Maximize email personalization – capitalize on its effectiveness without manually inserting recipient names; trusted email service providers (ESPs) automate this process seamlessly.
Next, ensure to thoroughly test your email campaigns prior to deployment. Utilize tools like Mailtrap Email Testing – an Email Sandbox designed to test and debug emails in staging environments. This tool enables you to validate HTML/CSS, assess spam scores, and preview emails across desktop, tablet, and mobile views. Additionally, it confirms the proper substitution of placeholders with real values.
Furthermore, remain vigilant regarding changes in privacy and regulatory policies, such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM. Compliance with regulations, including the inclusion of unsubscribe options, is crucial for campaign success and legitimacy of mailing lists.
Lastly, integrate your email marketing strategy with your broader digital marketing initiatives. This alignment fosters consistency across all marketing channels, enhancing overall effectiveness and brand coherence.
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