"Is email marketing worth the investment?" is a common question for most startup business owners looking to boost their bottom line. Out of all marketing strategies being used in 2021, email marketing remains one of the techniques with the highest Return-On-Investment. For every $1 you spend, email marketing delivers an ROI of $42. In this article, I explain the 6 useful tips for planning a monthly email marketing calendar to get the most out of your email blast.
The Role of Email Marketing within a Content Marketing Strategy
Email marketing has an important role in any content marketing strategy. With email marketing, you are able to target specific segments of your audience through carefully crafted and personalized messaging. The advantages of email as a marketing strategy are:
Emails have long-term value because they remain in the recipient’s inbox until acted upon
Emails allow you to communicate directly with your audience on a 1-on-1 basis
Email marketing campaigns allow you to target and connect with specific audiences effectively with personalized messaging
Emails provide an extra channel to amplify and prolong the life of other content assets such as social media posts and blog content
Analytical data from email advertising can provide useful insights that can inform all brand marketing efforts.
It is affordable
What are the Key Components of a Winning Marketing Email?
There are few ground rules you need to take into account to run winning email marketing campaigns. They include:
A). Having an Identifiable “From Name”
Ensure you use your brand name as your ‘From Name’ to guarantee that your users instantly recognize you as the sender.
B). Crafting an Engaging Subject Line
Always make sure your subject line is clear, personalized, and captivating. DO NOT mislead. Ideally, the length of your subject line should not exceed 65 characters.
C). Providing an Informative Preheader
An email preheader is the extension of your subject line and offers readers an introduction to the purpose of your email. Like the subject line, it should be simple, personalized, and intriguing. Another key thing to remember is that your users may use a variety of devices to open your email. Taking into account the amount of space available on mobile devices such as a smartphone or tablet, ensure that the length of your preheader is 30-55 characters. Don’t forget to add a ‘View online’ link in the preview text.
D). Crafting your Emails using a “Responsive Design”
In 2020, 39% of marketing emails sent were accessed using a mobile device. What this means is that your emails have to be responsive. To achieve this;
Use a single-column layout
Ensure your title font size is 22
Keep the copy line short with a maximum of 6 words with a font size of 12-14
Use line spacing of 1.5
Ensure your CTA button has a minimum of 44x44 pixels with a font size of 16.
E). Ensuring your emails are Accessible
Up to 2.2 billion people globally have some form of visual impairment. Following the WCAG’s accessibility guidelines is a no-brainer. To ensure your emails are accessible;
Provide logical reading order to your email subscribers by delivering content from left to right and from top to bottom
Provide Alt-Text for images to make it easy for those using screen readers to understand the content of your email
Use headers to help your readers using assistive devices clearly understand the structure of your email content
Do not use a center-aligned copy structure because dyslexic people may encounter problems reading your email
Ensure there is color contrast between the text color and the email background color as with the fact that around 8% of the global population is color blind.
What is an Email Marketing Calendar?
An email marketing calendar is a schedule of the marketing messages you’ll send to subscribers on your email list, and when you will send them. It is an essential part of planning and executing your entire email marketing strategy. This is because it maps your big ideas and converts them into actionable steps.
Planning in advance allows you to identify and capture critical opportunities that can boost sales or overall brand awareness be it a Zoho campaign or Mailchimp email marketing. Furthermore, without a calendar for your drip campaign as email marketing is sometimes called means you end up with ineffective emails due to inadequate planning, design, testing, and optimization of your efforts.
How to Plan Your Email Marketing Campaigns and Track Results
Here comes the most important part. How do you build your email marketing calendar? Here are the key steps to get you started.
1. Review the Previous Year
The first step is to analyze your to-do lists from the past few months. Are there any content objectives from last year that you failed to meet? Make a decision if they are still relevant, and create your new list with these ideas as the priority, if the answer is yes. Why is this important?
It helps you eliminate the feeling that you have unfinished business or ideas that you failed to execute
It ensures that you are not starting from scratch
2. Assess your Content Marketing Performance
The expectation is that you are monitoring your content marketing efforts regularly. If not, simply evaluate your content performance from the last 6 months overall. Consider;
Which email topics delivered the best click-through and open rates
If you have a blog, which posts brought in the most traffic
Which social media posts had the most engagement in terms of likes, comments, and shares?
Once this is done, identify the topics you want to incorporate into your email marketing strategy
3. Set Priorities and Goals
You could be looking to grow your sales volume by 30 percent. Alternatively, you expect that your B2B email marketing will garner you 50 new high-quality leads or demo bookings. Regardless of what you want to achieve, consider how your content can help you meet these aims. Setting priorities and goals are vital as they help keep you on track when you feel stuck or frustrated. The results are often worth the work put in.
4. Check your Calendar
Once you have your priorities and in place, create a schedule for your email blast for specific days on your calendar. This allows you to determine the number of ideas you need to generate for the month, quarter, or year depending on how extensive you want your drip campaign to be. Identify your own important dates by considering things such as:
If you have a business anniversary or special event you want to celebrate
If you have a seasonal offer or sale
If there are special events during the year that are relevant to your business eg general holidays or seasonal activities
5. Set a schedule
First, determine the send date and then work backward from it. Always ensure that you have enough room to create, review, and test to stand in with a chance to get the best email marketing results. Testing covers aspects such as double-checking the images and links and making sure the content appears exactly how you want it to appear to the reader across different devices.
6. Set a Measuring and Adjusting Schedule
Just like scheduling content, evaluating your email marketing KPIs should also be scheduled. You can assess the performance of your email marketing campaigns weekly, monthly, or quarterly. However, the most important thing is that this should be done regularly such you are able to identify what’s working and making the necessary changes to achieve the best email marketing outcomes from your campaigns.
For effective measuring of your email marketing campaigns, keep track of the following metrics:
Open rates - The number of people who received the email and read it
Click-through rates - the number of people who clicked on a link in the email
Forwards - The number of readers who forwarded the email to a friend
Unsubscribers -The number of subscribers who chose to stop receiving similar emails from you
Conversion rate - The number of readers who clicked through and actually went ahead to buy, schedule a demo, download a free trial, etc.
Final Thoughts
Similar to any other marketing tactic, email marketing involves a couple of unknown variables. However, proper planning and execution allow you to earn some control over these variables. This is because a carefully planned email marketing strategy allows you to monitor metrics and find results that translate into real-world value.
If you are looking for a comprehensive email marketing strategy for effective campaigns, get in touch today.
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