This is a guest post by Carlo de la Paz from Branders.com.
Planning for email marketing strategies is like producing a film or movie. There are many “production stages” involved.
In filmmaking, you can’t just grab a video recorder and shoot scenes right away. You need to follow a timeline that will allow you to take care of the many aspects and requirements of the project.
It is the same with email marketing. There is a need to follow a sequence so you can plan, execute work properly, and finally, gauge the results.
If film making has pre-production, production, and post-production stages, so does email marketing. You need to make sure to adhere diligently to these three stages so you won’t miss anything.
Check out the three stages of email marketing and what it entails for you, the marketing expert:
1. Pre-Production Stage
The pre-production stage of email marketing is essentially about the different preliminary preparations.
At this stage you will need to define your target audience and find what their different needs are. You will also decide on the date of the targeted emails as well as which email marketing software to use. Here are some tips you can opt to follow:
- Get To Know Your Target Audience Closely
It is not enough to identify their basic demographics. Find out their lifestyle and how it fits or suits the products and services you offer. Determine what tickles their fancy and what their main interests are. It also helps to know how they generally communicate so you can adjust the tone of your emails.
- Locate And Purchase Great Email Marketing Software.
It is imperative that you find a highly efficient email marketing software or application which can help you achieve your email marketing goals. You can try using the trial versions that some companies offer but you have to think about the long haul too. So make sure to secure a good budget for these software and applications.
- Design And Run Some Tests For Your Campaign.
Once you have identified your audience and purchased a good set of email marketing software, you can then begin designing and testing your campaign. Keep your overall marketing goals in mind when thinking about the perfect slogan, motto, or catchphrase. The message has to be short but highly effective. Once you’re done, you can proceed on identifying potential respondents to test the campaign with. This way, you’ll have an idea if your design can potentially bring in positive responses from future buyers.
- Set A Date And Timeline For The Campaign.
This is the part when you check your calendar and determine the schedule for your campaign. This is critical because you don’t want to be too late in promoting your products, like offering Christmas ornaments when Valentine’s Day is near already. Make sure to set a workable and definite schedule. Don’t forget to stick to it!
2. Production Stage
When you’re done with the pre-production stage, you can proceed with the production stage. A lot of work comes in here too so you better be ready. Check out some tips that can make the task really bearable for you:
- Segregate Your List.
The list that you came up with from pre-production stage will have to undergo segregation. Why is this done? This is primarily executed to erase contacts that may not be interested with your campaign anymore. You will avoid potentially irate customers if you do this properly.
- Set A Date And Timeline For The Campaign.
This is the part when you finally send those useful and helpful emails. Be prepared to alter or revise some of your wordings as you deem necessary for some respondents.
3. Post-Production Stage
Email marketing doesn’t ends after sending the emails. You need to monitor the results too. This is the only way for you to know if the campaign was successful or not. Below are some pointers for you:
- Respond To Emails Immediately.
Send timely replies to your respondents. This way, they will have an impression that they can expect great service from you and that you are attending closely to their needs. You can opt to be more casual when you reply to their emails.
- Develop An Alternate Plan
If you don’t have too many positive responses, you must have a backup plan. You need to create a system that will allow you to respond appropriately even to the most hateful of emails. Make sure to maintain professionalism at all times.
- Maintain Or Improve your email marketing strategy.
Once you are able to gauge if the campaign was effective or not, you need to either maintain or improve the strategy. Scrap ineffective techniques and maintain or develop the good ones.
Email marketing is not easy to do but if you’re diligent with your work, you’ll find that although it is challenging, it can be pretty rewarding too.
So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and develop an email marketing plan now!
Email marketing was the least priority to me previously but i do realized that top marketers are making a killing with repeat buyers so decided to learn more about email marketing.
Really wish i would have read this before i started with email marketing, things would have been so much simpler! Still their is some new things i picked up now, will recommend this to a friend who is thinking about getting into IM. Keep up the fantastic writing!
Very good tips. Email marketing can be a touchy subject for people. We are not far removed from the dreaded SPAM EMAIL days where everything in your email inbox was ads for useless, completely irrelevant products. Consumers have a fragile relationship with emails, and are looking for any reason to jump ship and ignore yours. By pre-planning, having a clear focus and a set timeline, you can ensure that your campaign avoids that stench of “mass-email campaign” that all of us know well. Love this advice, all companies should use these guidelines.
I believe you have to have consent from the people you are emailing as well to be able to even send them emails without breaking spam guidelines, or they have to subscribe to your emails. Before a lot of the spam email guidelines were changed it was a lot easier. It was like up until 2 years ago that they made a lot of changes in order to email people, so its a lot harder now-a-days.
Carlo,
You make some great points here. Good email marketing is NOT “set it and forget it” you need to take these steps, understand your audience, react, adjust, reply and change things accordingly. Email marketing can be an exceptional way to make money still…but never if it is just a series of emails that niether you nor the recipients pay attention to.
I must say the 3 stages or tenets you presented reminds me of preparing a English lesson using the audio-lingual method. Email Marketing is one of the best marketing and income stream, but it certainly takes planning and funneling to get the best fruits. Key is not to spam but provide value to users.
Yes! The post production aspect is so crucial. The follow up and communication with an email campaign is an essential step in adding validity to the whole process. Without the follow up your email campaign looks like another spam email that is mindlessly sent out. I also like the idea of adjusting or improving after the fact. Ultimately these things are a process, and fine tuning is a part of the game. Why bother with an email campaign if you are not going to follow up with it or improve upon it? Important stuff, thanks for sharing it to us.
A lot of people make the mistake of taking email marketing lightly. I am really impressed with the suggestions you presented to enhance quality and efficiency in email marketing. I prefer setting up a well thought plan and strategy to make a good impression about my company.
You have talked about locating and purchasing great email marketing software but the most difficult thing in this regard is locating so how should one search for best email marketing soft. Would you please enlist some of the best?
Hey Carlo,
Really great post! I think it’s great the way you’ve outlined everything. It’s important to keep track of the things you are doing when marketing, so you can make sure that you are focusing on the right target markets and linking to the right things. I’m pretty new to blogging and I’m glad to have more experienced bloggers help me out like this!