Strategies and plans are all part of the big marketing family, and both are important to direct the growth of your business. An email marketing strategy defines your approach for the long-term benefit of your marketing, and a plan is what you implement in the short term to support your strategy.
To use email as a marketing tool, first establish your overall purpose for using email to reach your audience. This is developed through evaluation of your competitive advantage, company values, and segment of the market. Then develop campaigns, goals, and projects into plans. Your email marketing campaigns are guided by your marketing strategy, so it is important to make your strategy as comprehensive as possible.
Use these steps to form a strategy that shines a light on the best in your company, which you can then use for effective email marketing.
Let’s dive into how to grow, engage, and retain your email subscribers over the long term.
A Step-by-Step Email Marketing Strategy
Read through these four steps and take the time to write down your company’s position for each step.
1. Evaluate Your Competitive Advantage
What do you have over your competitors? Determine what makes your company unique and why consumers are better off purchasing from your business instead of another business that could serve them in the same way.
There are various methods of analyzing your place in the market and identifying ways to gain that competitive advantage. Here are two of the many methods you can use for analysis:
- 4Ps Analysis
- SWOT Analysis
Learn more about how to do a competitor analysis from Feedough.com.
Once you have determined your place in the market, you can emphasize that in your email campaigns and automation to develop your brand story for your audience.
2. Evaluate Your Company Values
What does your company stand for? This would come out in your mission or vision statement and be instrumental in how you have developed and how you deliver your products and services. Your values are important to relay in emails and other marketing communications so that you can appeal to the best segment of the market for your business.
3. Evaluate Your Segment of the Market
Get to know as much as you can about your market demographics and the segment that would get the most benefit from your business. Even though your company may appeal to a wider market, like homeschoolers, you still want to narrow down your focus, for example, to homeschoolers with struggling readers. You can get demographic information from a few different places about your market and then create a persona (or two or three, depending on your business).
With a clear picture of your target market, you are better equipped to know how you can impact them through emails.
4. Evaluate Your Email Marketing Strategy
Once you’ve gathered all the information and data about your competitive advantage, the value of your business, and your market segment, you can expertly formulate a strategy to grow your list, attract subscribers, and give them what they want.
Your strategy should consist of:
- Techniques that encourage people to sign up for your emails
- Consistency and purpose of sending emails
- The general description of the content of your emails
- Engagement techniques that will lead readers to take action
- Automation techniques to segment subscribers (in emails and on signup forms)
- Automation techniques to deliver behavior-based email campaigns (like abandoned cart, email re-engagement, membership on-boarding)
Read through the blog post on eSputnik.com, How to Create An Email Marketing Strategy for the deeper details to complete your strategy.
There is a lot to consider, but if you build your email marketing strategy with your core business in mind, this daunting task will ensure you have the fuel for effective campaigns for years to come. A strategy provides the framework for converting subscribers into customers through the language you use, the graphics you display, and the content you include.
If any segment of your market includes homeschoolers (or parents), use our advertising venues to reach this quickly growing audience with offers to join your email list. Receive individual attention that will help you reach the segment of the homeschooling market that is right for your business by contacting us for personal help with your advertising needs.
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