You have just been assigned as the owner of the task to initiate or take over the email marketing campaign for your company. Yet being the business owner, a key decision maker, or a mid-level marketing manager does not inherently mean that you know how to get started on this critical piece of your marketing efforts.
Email marketing is more than typing up cleverly written content and sending it out. There are many key factors, campaign management tools, and techniques to consider. Before you throw all your email addresses on the BCC line and fire away, it is important to be aware that eCommunications today is vastly different from what it was merely a few years back.
Forbes Contributor Pia Silver says in her article “Why Newsletters Suck And How To Do Successful Email Marketing” that email marketing is all about speaking to your ideal clients. So, where do you begin? How do you get started? As your marketing agency, we offer these “diving board” tips to get you launched off into the deep end of the customer engagement pool.
1. Define Your Segmented Audience
Regardless of what product you are selling or service you are offering, it is imperative to segment the emails to target key attributes of your intended recipients. Categories like demographics, behavioral factors, similar industries, etc., are key points to consider when you are writing the content or deciding what products/services to feature.
2. Determining the Best Program to Use
If your customer relationship manager, or CRM, does not have a baked-in email creation tool with templates and suggestions, and even if it does, you may be wondering which program is best for you. With so many to choose from like MailChimp, HubSpot, ConstantContact, SharpSpring, and Thryve, just to name a few, the features and functionality of each program may be as unique as you are.
We strongly recommend that you get a demo of each of the programs that most fit your goals. And if that seems like a daunting task, please let us know how we can help.
3. Writing the Content
If you now know who you are writing to and which program you are going to use, knowing what to say would be the next logical step. What should you send emails about? What do you want to say to your targeted audience? Here is an example of content that you can use to create some email topics for your campaign. Perhaps the list will inspire you to think of other areas to write about:
- Upcoming events your company is participating in
- Recaps of prior events with photos
- News coverage
- Social media posts that have garnered a lot of attention
- Details about featured products or services
How We Can Help
Clearly these are beginning tips as you are developing your strategy, schedule and success metrics. There is much more to share and impart on this topic. We highly recommend that you partner with a marketing professional as you embark on this effort. The team at Imphasis is standing by to empower you with confidence and the know-how to take the next steps.
Please reach out to us to set up a conversation. We’re eager to work with you!