Five Top Tips When Planning Email Marketing for Businesses

Planning email marketing for businesses effectively can see you get new clients almost by magic, after you’ve allowed the marketing to nurture and prepare them for making a purchase.

Email can be a very powerful medium for your business. That is why smart business owners are investing on email marketing, a cost-effective marketing strategy that allows you to manage and engage with your existing contacts. Not only that, it also allows you to track your email campaigns, and identify your most engaged followers.

While most business owners know they need to contact their database “once a month or so”, there is far more to effective email marketing than the monthly newsletter (In fact, we’re not a huge fan of these for most businesses, unless done carefully)

Despite its many advantages, many companies are passing on the opportunity presented by email marketing, not realizing that it can potentially be the key to their business’ long-term growth. While it may require a bit of an adjustment at first, careful planning is the key to successful email marketing.

Here are some tips on how you can plan and leverage email marketing to ensure your business’ success:

1. Decide based on data. A lot of businesses do not use data when they create campaigns. Campaigns where you’ve match the content and actions to what your data says is the most effective,  are more likely to succeed because of a clear understanding of what works and what does not work. Without understanding your data, your campaign will have no basis which makes it more likely to fail. So, before starting any campaign, look at the data available to you and decide based on the insights from the data. Also, make sure to analyse the results of previous campaigns. You just might find something that worked in the past and potentially use it again in your next campaigns.
2. Find a reliable Email Marketing Platform. There are many of them out there. We prefer Active Campaign for most NZ business, but we also work a lot with Zoho, and Mailchimp. Finding the right tool is important – as it needs to help you nurture your audience.
3. Create effective, catchy calls to action (CTA). What’s the point sending an email if you don’t know why you’re sending it, and letting the reader in on your secret? Customers don’t just want to know your offerings; they also want to know how your offerings address their needs or wants. When creating campaign, your CTAs must leave a lasting impact in such a way that customers will remember them. Create CTAs that are straightforward yet customer-focused. And always make sure you include one!
4. Let your readers know what’s in it for them. Value is the first thing that readers think about when opening their emails. Why should they open yours? Are you adding value to their lives or are you just wasting their time? Be creative. You can offer discount, freebies, or other items that will let them click on your message. Leverage buyer personas so that the next time you send them an email, you know exactly what they want.
5. Segment your readers. Do not send the same email across all your email contacts because chances are, their needs and wants may be different. Segment them according to their profiles and create emails relevant to each segment. Know that different segments of readers have different wants, perspectives, and backgrounds.

The next time you think about email marketing, make sure to keep these five tips in mind. These will guide you towards a more effective, relevant, and successful campaign.

We’re experts in marketing automation and Active Campaign consultants. We can help you set up your data,  integrations, automations and help you run effective marketing automation to grow your e commerce store.