Do you know that more than 290 billion emails are sent every day and email marketing continues to be the most effective marketing channel?

Email marketing has outperformed all other forms of online marketing and to make effective use of it, one needs to design an appropriate Email Marketing Strategy.

An effective email marketing strategy will help you to convert prospects into customers. If you do not develop the right email marketing strategy, your emails may get lost in the inboxes of the recipient or sent to the spam folder.

You will find that the costs of implementing an email marketing strategy will be relatively low and the risks would be less but it will deliver you the highest ROI.

You can create and customize your email marketing strategy according to the results you want to achieve with your emails.

When you have chosen your goal and audience you can build your email list, draft the email content, and send it. Then you must be ready to track your emails, document the results, and analyze how your customers responded to your email.

It may surprise you to know that 92% of internet users have at least one email account and 91% of them access their email at least once a day. These statistics show you that there is no room for doubt about the potential of email marketing.

Email marketing has an ROI of 4400% and you should remember that email usage is expected to increase in the coming years also. Email marketing will remain effective and it will outrank other popular marketing channels.

You might have noticed that email marketing has evolved and changed over the years but it has managed to remain effective and grow more popular.

12 fundamental steps of email marketing

1. Establishing your goals and segmenting your subscribers
2. Building an email list
3. Choosing an email campaign type
4. Master slide formatting
5. Including a CTA (Call To Action)
6. Optimizing your email messages for mobile experience
7. Use lead magnets to grow your email list
8. Automating email campaigns
9. Setting ideal email frequency
10. Using a professional email marketing tool
11. Measuring your results
12. Re-engaging inactive subscribers

Here are the 12 Best Email Marketing Strategies you should implement.

1. Establishing your goals and segmenting your subscribers

Setting goals for your email marketing campaign is important because if you don't know what you want to achieve then you will never get it. When you are setting goals be specific in what you want to achieve.

You can have a goal like boosting sales, making people attend an event you have organized, informing about new products, or just a newsletter. Your goals must be realistic and attainable and in the end, you should be able to measure the results.

If you are not able to measure the outcome of your email campaign then you cannot make changes and tailor your campaign to succeed in your business.

Before setting your goals it is important to identify your target audience. You can segment your audience into groups according to their location, demographics, gadgets they use, and their personal preferences.

Your goals and the metrics you want to track will change depending on the segment of the audience. You can send different types of email to different segments of audience and track the results.

2. Building an email list

Your email list plays the most important part in your email marketing strategy. Email list building is essential to grow your business and only when you have a list of email addresses you will be able to promote your business or showcase your products.

You have to find people who are interested in the services you are offering and then you need to collect their email addresses. One of the best places where you can find people is on your website and blog.

You have to target people who are looking for something specific in your website and blog.

You don't have to worry even if your website is small because all you need is a good landing page with a CTA.

You can try to make them subscribe to your email list through the CTA , a pop-up form or a contact form. You should understand that people would not give their email address unless they get something in exchange.

You can entice people by offering them something, like eBooks, guides, discount coupons and free downloads, in return for joining your email list.

If your business has social media accounts then you should try to convert your followers into subscribers. You can add a link to join your subscription list in your social media account.

You may already have a list of email addresses from your Gmail but you should always find a way to include more contacts to your existing list.

3. Choosing an email campaign type

There are different types of email marketing campaigns and you should choose the one that will suit your audience and also help you to achieve your goal.

Welcome e-mail

When people join your email list the first email you send them will be a welcome email. In that email you can share with the subscriber all the relevant information which they would like to know about your business.

Newsletter

This is the most popular type of email through which you share information about your company with your customers. Newsletters help you to build a trustworthy relationship with your audience.

Announcement

You may want to update your customer about a new feature that you have introduced in your services. You can send this type of emails to your subscribers to make announcements and give them a chance to avail new services.

Invitation

You need to send invitation emails to increase awareness of an upcoming event and encourage your customers to participate in it.

Marketing offers

You may want to boost sales by offering discounts or introduce a new service with a promotional offer. You can send offers through email and it will get you direct response from your customers by having CTA in your email.

4. Personalizing your messages

Personalizing your email messages will make your customers happy and get you great results. You can not send the same type of emails to all customers since each of them will have a different need.

Only when you know your customer well you can send them messages according to their needs. To find out about your customers you have to collect data from them through sign-up forms on your website.

Once you have all the data you can tailor your email messages according to their preferences. You should write a killer subject line based on all the data you have collected.

The subject line plays a very important part in your email as it makes the customer decide about opening the email. The right subject line will lead to higher open rate and conversion.

You can create the email content based on the customer’s gender, age, location and other preferences. Targeted personalization will increase customer engagement and all customers are happy when the content is relevant and personalized.

You must choose the right words to grab your customer's attention and make them read your entire email. Make sure that your content is clear and brief without any unnecessary details.

5. Including a CTA (Call To Action)

You must include a CTA in your email to drive your customers to action . When your customers click on the CTA it should take them to a relevant page on your website.

Before including a CTA you should know what your customers expect from you. They will be looking for something specific and your CTA should be able to lead them towards it.

Your CTA button should stand out from the rest of the content so that it will get noticed easily. You can surround the button with white/blank space and place it strategically to draw the customer's attention.

CTA buttons make a strong and powerful impact on the customer so a small change in the words in the CTA will make a huge difference.

You should make sure that the CTA links to a page that compliments your email content and ensures that the customer has a cohesive experience.

6. Optimizing your email messages for mobile experience

You should make your email marketing strategy to be mobile compatible as most people will be viewing emails on their mobiles and tablets. Optimizing your campaign for mobile phones is essential to increase the open rate and click rate.

You must use an email template that will look great on desktops and handheld devices. You should write a compelling and concise subject line with the right number of characters so that it is fully visible on mobile devices also.

Your pre-header text is also critical and it should not be too long. Your customers will view the pre-header text first and decide whether they should open your email or not.

The size of the image and text in your emails must be easy to view on mobile devices. If they are very small the customer will find it difficult to view and your email may not be read completely.

You should try to add big CTA buttons and distinctly visible hyperlinks to make it easy for the customers to click through. Your customer must be taken to a mobile-friendly landing page after he clicks on the CTA.

7. Use lead magnets to grow your email list

Even when customers like your brand they may not sign up for your email list easily. They may be looking for something in return for giving you their email address.

You can use lead magnets to increase the number of people joining your email list. The Lead magnet is something you offer to your customers free of cost for subscribing to your email list.

You can offer useful content in the form of a free download, ebook, checklist, planner or tutorial. Your lead magnet should be something that your customer needs and it should tempt them to join your list immediately.

When your customer is taken to the landing page of your website by clicking on the CTA you can ask them to fill out a form to collect their name, email address and any other information you need from them. Then you should take them to the thank you page from where they can download the freebie and get added to your email list.

Once people join your email list they have started their customer journey and you should continue to nurture them so that your brand makes an impact on them.

8. Automating email campaigns

Automating email campaigns allows you to send the right messages to the right customers at the right time. Email automation tools will do repetitive tasks and save you valuable time.

Email automation works on the trigger and action system and as soon as a prospect or customer meets a specific trigger that you have defined, the email automation tool will start sending emails to them.

You should segment your prospects and customers based on their activities and send relevant automated emails to each group.

You should know that when you send relevant emails they will be opened and clicked more frequently and they will generate more revenue for your business.

These automated emails which you send will be timely and personalized and you can expect a better response from your prospect or customer.

You can also keep in touch with your customers by sending automated emails at regular time intervals. These emails will help you to nurture your customers and develop a strong relationship with them.

9. Setting ideal email frequency

You should note that you do not bombard your customers and prospects inbox with your emails. When you send emails very frequently it may irritate your customers and they will stop opening your emails or even unsubscribe from your email list.

By understanding your customers you can determine the frequency of the emails you send to them.

When you understand the nature and duration of your customer’s journey with you it will be easier to plan the perfect time to send emails.

You can also plan to send different types of emails at different times so that your customers will be reading a different type of content in each email.

You can choose and experiment with different frequencies for different segments of customers.

Your frequency should depend upon the goal you want to achieve through your email campaign.

You must make changes to the email frequency whenever you find low open rates, low engagement and spam complaints.

It is necessary that you must provide an option, in each email, to stop receiving your emails if your customers are not interested in reading it.

10. Using a professional email marketing tool

You should use an email marketing tool to create, send, test, optimize and analyze emails.

These tools will help you to craft professional emails and deliver personalized messages that will engage your audience and improve your relationship with customers.

Without an email marketing tool, you will be spending too much time creating and sending perfect emails.

You should choose an email marketing tool with features that suit your business goals. Most tools will allow you to choose a template and customize it with text, image and videos.

You can also personalize your email to each recipient and create a big impact. You should make sure that your email marketing tool has a simple user interface.

Your email marketing tool must ensure that your emails do not land up in the spam folder of the recipient.

By using an email marketing tool you can easily measure the open rate, click-through rate and other metrics which will help you to optimize your email campaigns.

11. Measuring your results

However well you optimize your emails if you are not able to see the results of your efforts then you cannot make any improvement.

You should track certain metrics, like open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate and bounce rate, of your email to figure out whether you are making any progress towards your goal.

If you are determined to reach your goal then you should monitor your metrics closely. These metrics provide valuable data about the email campaigns and also a clear insight into the user activity

By measuring these metrics you will learn about the success of your email campaign and if necessary make adjustments to improve your strategy.

You should try to establish a tracking schedule which can be once a week or month.

By checking the results with previous performances you will be able to detect whether you are improving or not.

12. Re-engaging inactive subscribers

You may find that some people from your email list have become inactive and stopped interacting with your email.

You should not remove them from your email list immediately but try sending them re-engagement emails.

The main aim of your re-engagement email is to make the inactive customer respond to your email.

You can send re-engagement emails only after segmenting the inactive customers from active customers.

Your re-engagement emails must grab the attention of the inactive customers and make them think about the reason they had for joining your email list.

They may be leading a very busy life and forgotten that they had signed up for your email list.

You can try to get them back by offering them additional discounts or offers. Remind them of their past journey with your business and how happy you would be to see them active again.

If the customer does not get interested even after viewing your re-engagement mail then you should allow them to decide whether they want to receive your emails or not.

You should analyze the results of re-engagement emails and segment those who responded to your email.

You should clean your email list by removing those customers who did not respond to your re-engagement email.

After cleaning you may have a shorter list but customer engagement is the goal of email marketing.

Customer engagement will improve your reputation and give you a more accurate view of what is working and what is not working.

Related Articles:

• Gmail add-ons to improve your email productivity
• The Ultimate guide to boost sales with email marketing

Conclusion

Email marketing will help you to succeed in your business as it is the most cost-effective and preferred form of marketing in the world.

It is very beneficial as you will be sending emails only to those people who are interested in your services and have already signed up to receive your emails.

You can segment your customers and send targeted messages to each segment which is not possible in other marketing channels.

Email marketing tools are very easy to use and you will not require a large team for marketing purposes. You can measure and tailor your marketing strategy and achieve the goals in your business by planning carefully.