20. How To Craft An Email Marketing Strategy That Works: Details.

If you want to create a great email marketing strategy,  you have to double down on these three pillars. They are paramount to your email marketing coming out successful and they are as follows. 

Significance of Segmentation:

If you have been reading on this blog for the last two weeks, you may have an idea how Segmentation works. But for the sake of crafting a great email marketing strategy, I'll break it down further in detail. 

Segmentation is the grouping of your leads according to their specific interests in order to serve them the content that best suits them. In other words, Segmentation helps you send the right message, to the right person at the right time. 

Over the years, inbox marketing has gotten tighter. Your leads have their attention span shortened and their attention generally divided and fought for by other marketers. 

What singles you out? Well, one such practice is Segmentation. It focuses as much on the context as it also focuses on the content of the message you send to your audience. 

Data Marketing Association,  the DMA have discovered that 77% of Marketing return on investment (ROI) came from targeted, segmented and triggered campaigns.

This is precisely why it is significant.

Segmentation will help you take note of who exactly you need to send a particular message to and because of this, you are able to craft really personalised emails. 

Okay I think I'm beginning to become too technical. Let's paint a clear picture here. 

You are a marketer. You have an email list, right? You sell food for pets, specifically dogs. Normally, everyone who has a dog that they really care about will click on your lead magnet and become a member of your email audience.

However, you got to find out that your email audience have different types of dogs as pets obviously, and some react to these foods differently. If you want to apply Segmentation here, what do you do? 

Simple. You create different email groups for these dog owners, according to the types of dog that's their pet. This way when you send out campaigns, you are super specific about who it is you're talking to and what dog food offer you have for them. 

It'll look similar to 

Group 1: Dog Owners (Chihuahua)

Group 2: Dog Owners (Samoeed)

Group 3: Dog Owners (Bull Dogs)

Etc

This brings me to the second pillar: Personalisation.

This is more than just knowing the name of your audience or segmenting them. By knowing your Buyer's Persona and Journey, you can be more specific in your message to them; 

You can easily address them by their name, their pain points, by their level of awareness,  by the specific solution you know they're looking for. This is all addressed in Personalisation.

For example, your email could begin like this (based on say... a Buyer's Persona and Journey of a 25 year old lady that wants to lose weight faster than 90 days.)

"Dear Linda, 

I know you stopped buying spaghetti strap gowns, because of how big your arms have gotten,

I know you have been told in the past that you can only lose 4kg every month,

But what if I become so bold to make you a simple promise,

You can lose 12kg in 6 weeks!! ........" 

Etc etc

The third pillar of an effective email marketing strategy is Data-Driven Analysis. This is how all your metrics tie into your output. 

The people who you send this to have tastes and preferences and they change from time to time. Analysing the given data is a great way to know what's changed and how to adjust and adapt to your audience. 

Your email marketing strategy would be largely incomplete if you're not making informed decisions based on the the results on analysing the data of your emails. 

These include past emails, interactions, behaviours, etc. You would be leaving money on the table if you're not analysing these details constantly. How to do it?

1. Track the metrics that matter to your business. It differs from business to business. What helps inform your sales and marketing conversions? Pay attention to them. 

2. Learn what those metrics indicate about the success of your strategy and business in general. 

3. Apply what you've learned to improve and optimise. You have to do this as often as possible and that's how important data analysis is in your email marketing strategy. 

Finally, What does a good email marketing strategy look like? 

Well this consists of three things, Irrespective of what kind of business it is. But before we begin, take your time and joy down on a piece of paper everything you think builds up the success of your email marketing business. 

Done?

Let's look at those three elements of a successful email marketing strategy. 

1. A good Email Service Software: It may not look like it but getting a good software that helps your particular business perform exactly what you want it to, is a good element for success. 

2. Understanding your full funnel email conversations: While your direct audience may be through email, they are not only reading your mails. They read your blog. You read your tweets, and they're on your Instagram. Understanding what conversations and how you are conversing with your audience helps to guide your Email Marketing business into success. 

You want to make sure that you are conversational with all the types of conversations you are having on all platforms with your audience. 

3. Clearly Defining Goals: Nothing shows that a project has been successful than clearly defined goals. You should set your goals so when you're not hitting them, you automatically know. 

Well, 

Stay here for my next post which will definitely be tomorrow. 

Have a great day! 

- Vivian