How to Create Your Email Marketing Strategy (Steps and Examples)

A full guide to email marketing strategy so you can start nurturing and converting your customers so that your company can take it up a notch.

In an environment where everyone is scrambling to hop on the newest trend in social media It's easy to overlook how effective (and crucial!) an email marketing strategy is for companies.

With a $42 return for every dollar you spend and a $42 return on every dollar spent, email remains the most effective channel to generate income.

In 2022, the vast majority of emails will be opened by smartphones, which will allow you to reach your ideal customers directly. Also, people are more selective about who they let access to their inboxes. This reduces the amount of clutter as channels such as social media. With the right strategies for email marketing, such as sequences and funnels, you can drive customer engagement for your business and create revenue streams, and continuously drive sales.

So, you can take a breath of relief that your business doesn't need to be constantly hopping onto every TikTok dance trend to acquire new clients. Focusing on the most important emails marketing strategies, such as creating your own email list in order to nurture subscribers, as well as developing conversion funnels, your business is able to create leads and increase sales, even in the absence of a large team or budget.

In this blog, we'll be giving you the most effective email marketing techniques for companies that want to increase sales and leads, so you can get started building relationships with customers and convert them into buyers.

Here's what you'll learn:

•    Strategies to Increase the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign
•      How to Choose the Best Email Marketing Platform
•      Capturing the Email Subscriber's Information With Email Formula Fields
•      Designing Your Emails for Campaign Success
•      Email Copy: Tips for Writing emails that are conversion-focused and funnels
•    Revenue-Generating List-Building Strategies
•      creating a Gated Asset (Lead Magnet) In order to attract new subscribers
•      How to Build an Active Email List of potential customers
•      Quick and Dirty Tips for Keeping Your Emails In Compliance
•    A Step-by-Step Email Marketing Strategy For Knowledge Commerce At Scale
•      Step 1: Segment your email list
•      Step 2: Develop (and evaluate) automatic email sequences, as well as funnels
•      Step 3: Set up email triggers
•      Step 4: Set up Contact tags
•      Step 5: Practice Good Email Hygiene with List Scrubbing
•    Use Data and Reporting Check Your Campaigns
•      A/B testing
•      Reporting: Email KPIs To Pay Attention To
•      The bottom line on Maximizing the Performance of Your email marketing campaigns

Strategies for Maximizing the Performance of Email Marketing Campaigns

Every marketing email strategy begins with a platform for marketing automation. Not only can you execute all critical email tasks from one window, but the right platform can also help your compliance to the rules of email.

How to Choose the Right E-Mail Marketing Platform

If you're overwhelmed with the number of marketing email platforms available, it's understandable. Marketing technology is an exploding industry, expanding 24 percent in the last two years, with 9,932 options including analytics and video-based platforms.

If your company is seeking a brand new automated marketing platform for email This article will help make the selection process easier so you can get back to focusing on growing the revenue of your business and finding new customers:

    Consider your unique business model and goals first.    

Consider with your team and yourself what you want to get from your email marketing automation platform and the way you'll make use of it today and in the future in the event that your organization or company continues to scale.

A common set of goals in marketing automation are:

• Ensuring that you get more quality leads
• The creation of cross-sell and upsell potential
• Preventing leaks from your funnel of sales
• Boosting the lifetime value of current customers
• Building advocates, and faithful customers

    Find the Marketing Automation options with those features that you want.    

Use this handy checklist as you conduct your own research or meet with different vendors.

• Functions:Is there one email marketing task that you must be accomplished with precision? Are you in need of assistance across a variety of activities in marketing? Does the platform meet your must-haves?
• Customizability:How much control do you desire over the look and layout of your email? Are you going to be using template templates that are pre-built? Or do you need customized options?
• Management:Do you need a platform that a single person or team of lean people could manage? Or do you have a bigger marketing team with a dedicated resource who can manage the system and your contact details?
• Simplicity:Do you have the time and resources to learn a more robust technique, or do need an out-of-the-box solution to use within just a few minutes? Do you require a drag-and-drop editor? Would you rather dive into the HTML code?
• User-friendliness:Is the interface simple, clear and user-friendly? Do you have the ability to easily locate the tools and options you need to do your job?
• Reports:Do your business require reporting that is real time? Does it capture those metrics that are the most crucial to your company? Do reports run on autopilot or require manual labor?
• NicheDoes an all-purpose platform include the metrics and features you're looking for? Are there solutions specifically created to your specific industry? Can they understand and support the unique tasks and reporting needs that you're facing?
• Cost:What tiers of pricing are offered? What is the pricing structure based by the amount of contacts, the message volume , or flat rate subscription? Which additional features are more expensive? How will pricing change as your business grows?
• ScalabilityDo your plans allow you to grow into the platform in the event that you have to include more features later on? How will it be able to accommodate the audience that increases?
• Helpdesk:Are Customer support staff helpful and responsive? How can you contact them via telephone, email or via chat? Do they offer self-support options like tutorials and guides?
• Integrators:How will your marketing automation program fit in the existing technology stack? How can you connect your existing systems like your CRM or your website?

Capturing the Email Subscriber's Information With Email Formula Fields

  What is an email form?  

It is possible to collect email addresses through an email form (also known as the opt-in type) that collects information from customers. Forms for email are an extremely secure way of collecting information from your prospects and customers, and they're one of the most important elements of your marketing.

  What are form fields?  

There are a variety of forms you can utilize as part of your email marketing strategy, but the most simple types have two fields, one for the subscriber's name, and one for the email addresses of their subscribers. Based on the strategy you choose it is possible to create email forms that require more information on the user as is possible.

  Which form fields should you include?  

The more fields you have on your email form and the more data you get on your customer and lets you market to the people you want to reach more effectively.

As an example, let's say the course you teach is designed to help working professionals be more productive. For that it is possible to include fields that ask about their lifestyle, like the size of their families as well as the industry they are employed in. What you learn through these questions will permit you to personalize your emails and advertisements to the topics which are relevant for people based on what they have answered.

Be careful not to make the forms overly long or precise. Most of the time, people are just too busy to finish lengthy forms. Certain people might be uneasy sharing their personal details. To get more people into your marketing funnel You should focus on smooth and easy processes while taking into account user satisfaction.

Making Your Emails Design-Based for Successful Campaigns

How your readers experience your emails is critical to the success of your marketing campaigns. How your emails look and feel, as well as how simple they are to read, as well as how they're structured all impact deliverability, click-through, and open rates.

Here are guidelines for designing emails that will ensure your marketing emails are nurturing your customers and turning them into buyers:

1. Pick one topic, and then CTA in email
     The most frequent mistakes marketers (especially marketers of courses) are making is that they cover too many topics and sharing too much information within an email. In order to avoid overwhelming or confusing your audience, every one email you send out should include one clear message and one specific request. If a topic you're covering is complex, consider breaking the emails into an anticipation-building series.
2. Keep your email length between 50-125 words.
      While not every email has to stay beneath this word limit, you should make your emails as succinct as possible. The more concise your message, the more likely it will be thoroughly read.
3. Make sure to keep the most crucial parts of the email near the start of the email
     On average, people spend 10 seconds per email reading for marketing purposes. In other words, readers don't have enough patience to keep reading through to find the information they require from your email. You have to hook your readers by delivering the most important info so they get value from your emails, even when they're in a hurry.
4. Create your email to be readable by using break lines and images
     Write to be readable. Divide your text into paragraphs that are no longer than three sentences. Use headings and bulleted lists to make your text easily readable. Add visuals like pictures or infographics, GIFs, and memes to draw attention and keep readers engaged.
5. Use simple colors
     Select the smallest amount of colours for your email. Most likely, you'll choose your company's colours. The fewer colors you use to create your designs, the less cluttered it will look, preventing readers from becoming diverted from your content.

email copy: tips for Writing E-mails that focus on conversion and creating Funnels

A marketing email strategy generally has two major goals:

1. Inbound Marketing
2. Outbound Sales

Also an email marketing plan can either help nurture your subscribers that are already part of your channel or draw new viewers' attention and convert them into leads, warm customers or even cold leads.

• Directly speaking to your intended audience
• Including curiosity-inducing subject lines
• Body content that is concise that has a single goal

How you can include the three ingredients that are winning into the email you send out:
 
 Step 1: Define the ideal profile of your client (ICP)

Before writing your first promotional material, it is essential to be aware of the audience you're writing it for.

• Do you have a good understanding of your target audience?
• What are they concerned about?
• What one action do you want them to take when they read the email?

  Second step: Create subject lines and headings that hook readers  

The art of creating headlines that catch attention isn't nearly as mysterious as it sounds. A hook-worthy headline is simply one that is able to catch readers' attention in a sea of other email marketing messages.

These are the best ways to make sure you're creating subject lines that will give your emails the best likelihood of being read:

• Create three or five subjects to allow you to A/B-test and pick the winners. (Disclaimer that you'll likely want to A/B test your click-through rate against open rates due to iOS 15's update that skews open rates. iOS 15 update that skews open rate data . More details below). ).
• Reduce the length of your HTML0 to less than 50 characters.
• Add personalization if possible: "The sweetest word in the English language is the one's personal first name." Your email form will instantly capture your customers' name, and your marketing software may fill it when you add the command "[First_Name[First_Name]"
• Make sure the tone is conversational. Do not use language that sounds like an email that is marketed in a canned way. Use contractions like "you're" rather than "you are." Make use of emojis in order to brighten up the message.
• Be attentive to the topics that grab your eye: Copywriters as well as marketers have an "swipe file" handy, where they can snap a quick screenshot and save their best copy and ads to use as inspiration.

  Step 3. Be aware of terms that can trigger spam filters  

While these words are not an absolute guarantee that your mail will be delivered to SPAM, it's good to be aware of them. When you are trying to figure out how to improve click-through rates and deliverability in the future It's important to know how these words could impact your outcomes.

Based on ActiveCampaign , SPAM filters tend to flag words that are associated with:

• Scams
• Tricks
• Schemes
• Promises
• Free gifts

Some examples of commonly used SPAM words and phrases are:

1. #1
2. 100percent more
3. 100% free
4. Additional income
5. Make yourself the boss of your own life
6. Financial freedom
7. FREE CONSULTATION

Profit-generating List Building Email Marketing Strategies

How do you increase your list of email subscribers? Start by offering your audience something of value in exchange for their email address. Today, we are bombarded with ads, promotions, and spam, and consumers are more attentive to ways to cut down the amount of digital noise. This means that people can't pass their email addresses easily. Instead, we need to make compelling promotions.

And that's where lead magnets and gated assets enter the chat.

creating a Gated Asset (Lead Magnet) In order to attract new subscribers

A lead magnet can be described as a giveaway or freebie which contains the information that your audience is looking for. Also known as a gated asset typical examples of B2B include guides, ebooks, quizzes as well as checklists, cheat sheets as well as swipe data.

To get email subscribers to sign up, you need to promote your lead magnet regularly. Place it in the center on your website's home page as well as an additional landing page that you can direct users to using LinkedIn blog posts on thought leadership or podcast interviews.

  What is the Best Lead Magnet For Your Company  

How do you determine what lead magnet is best for your organization? Consider the issues the audience is looking to solve as well as the format of content they're most likely to read.

For example, a busy sales professional struggling to attend book-related meetings won't find the time for a 30-page ebook, so they're most likely to download cold emailing scripts and templates. An executive in charge of marketing might have a habit of reading industry magazines, therefore developing something to match the way they consume information would be the best.

A few examples of gated assets that will entice subscribers:

• Cheat sheets
• Workbooks
• PDF Guide
• Audio / Video training
• Challenge
• Quiz
• A free online course providing online free courses to potential clients is a great method to build trust, show value, and increase conversions.

How To Build an engaged email list of Customers Who Could Be Potential

Now that you've created an opt-in-in-worthy lead-generator, it's time to create strategies to get visitors to it. Below are some actions you can take to build an email database that is engaged with potential customers:

1.    Place your opt-in forms in various key locations on your site
2. Pop-up bar/pop-up box
3. Side-bar
4. Mid-way and end of blog post
5. Every single one of your social media outlets
6.    Drive social media traffic to your gateway asset's landing page
7. Facebook
8. Instagram
9. TikTok
10. YouTube
11. LinkedIn
12.    Promote your gated asset inside the audio and video content you create
13. Podcast
14. YouTube
15. Webinars/Masterclasses Free Training
16.    Drive traffic to your gated assets via paid ads
17. Facebook/Instagram ads
18. Google PPC ads
19. YouTube advertisements
20. Adverts for sponsorships of podcasts
21. Press and interviews  
      Pitch yourself or a representative for your business as a podcast guest to shows in your field. Interviews will expose you to an audience that is new to your industry and can help develop thought leadership that can be crucial to increasing your audience. After the interview, you'll have an opportunity to market your brand, which makes it a great opportunity to mention your free lead magnet.
22. Blog posts sponsored by sponsors  
      If you're in the financial sector there is a possibility of locating a personal-finance writer with huge readership. They can then write blog posts regarding your product, business or brand. The typical procedure is to pay a one-time fee. The links to your gated asset are included in the content. Influencer marketing, sponsorships, and affiliates.
23. Influencer Marketing  
      Influencer marketing is a popular strategy for Lifestyle and B2C brands, however it is also valuable for B2B brands. Influencer marketing is the process of making use of the endorsements and social media presence of well-connected influencers to promote the product or service in a more authentic way to earn credibility.
24. Joint webinars, round-tables, or informal chats  
      Host a webinar in conjunction in conjunction with industry thought leaders with a large crowd. It is recommended to do this if they're not your direct competition. All of the emails collected will be included in your subscribers list.

Quick Tips for Maintaining Your Emails Compliant

Here are some easy ways to remain compliant when emailing your list:

1. Make sure you've obtained permission to contact the persons you've added to your email list using an Double consent.
2. Don't use misleading header information.
3. Utilize disclaimers to inform readers that it is a commercial message or an ad.
4. Include your email address.
5. Always Include an opt-out option which allows your subscribers to not longer receive future email messages from you.
6. Accept opt-out requests quickly (your marketing platform will do the task for you automatically).

A Step-by-Step Email Marketing Strategy For Lead Generation

If your marketing department is small, you can use the following steps to create captivating emails that create an enduring subscriber base to your organization.

Step 1: Segment your email list

Segmenting your email messages means splitting the email recipients in groups according to certain parameters. Your email list could be separated according to demographics, the forms they filled out to join your email lists, or even actions such as clicks and opens.

Segmenting is essential for maintaining an active and healthy subscribers because it lets the user to customize your email messages according to what your would like to learn rather than giving the same information to all.

  Use this method:  

With more and more data to hand Marketing automation allows users to deliver their subscribers regularly scheduled emails which are pertinent to their interests. You can let your subscribers self-segment by using the help of a survey.

2. Design (and evaluate) automatic email sequences as well as funnels

Each strategy for lead generation and conversion relies on automated funnels and sequences that help prospects pay customers and then to them on autopilot.

An automated funnel is the process you direct your customers through so that they turn to customers in the end. Your automated funnel will include the use of email marketing, social media and landing pages.

How do you create automated sequences

The individual approach to each user after they sign up to your mailing list is impossible, which is where the autoresponder feature of your marketing automation software' feature comes in.

When someone opts into your list of email subscribers Your marketing automation software will automatically send them a series of emails over a predetermined time frame based on the guidelines you have set. Automated sequences are a great way to nurture your audience on autopilot!

See It in Action The Ecommerce Course Funnel Snapshot

Imagine that you're an eCommerce business that is hosting a webinar to promote your training course in eCommerce successful tips. To promote your event, you'll schedule promo tweets or LinkedIn posts leading up to the webinar date. These social posts will drive traffic to your registration site, which is where attendees can fill in their information to register to attend the webinar for free.

When a person registers in the online webinar session, the marketing automation platform will internally tag them as "interested in eCommerce' and "registered for webinar. Instead of waiting around for them to join the event, you could make an autoresponder that goes out to those tagged leads. This sequence is likely to contain valuable material that's relevant to eCommerce maintaining them in the process and improving your webinar's conversion rate.

Even if some leads don't convert from the webinar, providing them with valuable material will help keep them on your list of email subscribers, which you'll then nurture the leads through other sequences that are automated. This creates an engagement loop that makes them sales-ready for your next promotion.

Step 3: Set up email triggers

Triggers instruct your platform to send a specific message to an individual in your email list. The platform operates according to "if/then" rules that follow this format when a prospective purchaser downloads our guide on how to, then they will immediately begin receiving weekly educational emails related to the same subject.

Triggers create a more personal customer experience, which is a far cry from those bulk 50% off emails you get from your favorite clothing brand. As per Smart Insights, triggered emails have 71% more opening rates, and 102% better click-through rates than general email newsletters.

Step 4: Set up tags for contact

Like we said Segmenting your list is the most effective method to send pertinent personalized emails that get opened and clicked. Tags are among the most efficient ways of segmenting your list.

For example, you could filter your target audience according to the type of form they used to sign up for email subscriptions. In other words your tag should answer the question 'how did they get on my list of email subscribers?' and tailor the content to it.

Marketing automation can help sort your list automatically by tagging subscribers according to the hyperlinks they have clicked.

Step 5 Step 5: Work on Good Email Hygiene With List Scrubbing

After having put in so much work into building and maintaining your email list, the thought of intentionally removing subscribers might sound like an act of blasphemy, but... according to OptinMonster about one third of your subscribers will never ever open or even click through your emails.

Thus, you should regularly "scrub" your email list. Email scrubbing means removing non-engaged users from your email list to allow you to market to people who want to get your newsletters. It is important to clean your email list at least once every year to ensure the accuracy of your reporting on email and maintain your sender reputation score.

You don't want the effort, time and resources you invest in email marketing wasted on subscribers who aren't interested in hearing from you. In addition, many companies that offer email marketing charge depending on the amount of subscribers you have, so in terms of technicality, cleaning your email list ensures you're not paying for people who don't read or open the links in your emails.

Utilizing Email Marketing Information and Reporting To Evaluate your Lead Gen Campaigns

When it comes to successful marketing your company there is no "right answer," just strategies that have been tried and tested. Tracking and reporting are a must when executing any strategy for email marketing.

Through gathering information, you can form rational conclusions regarding what you'll change, where to spend more money and the strategies you'll use next.

You should perform the testing below throughout your marketing activities:

Testing A/B

The process of testing your email for A/B or split, sometimes known as split testing, is when you compare two different versions of your email (version A and version B) to determine which performs better. Version A and B are sent to two different segments of your email list. The one with the highest open rates or more click-throughs (aka the "winning version") will be sent to your other email subscribers.

What elements of your email do you want to be testing A/B?

• Email subject lines
• From name (sender Name)
• Email content
• Design
• Send time

Reporting: Email KPIs You Must Keep an Eye On

Your email marketing platform may provide a bunch of marketing metrics. To avoid confusion and make marketing decisions quickly, focus on these critical metrics:

• Click-through RateIs the amount of recipients who click on the links contained in your emails. Click-through rates are among the most accurate indicators of email list engagement. An "good" click-through rate differs based on industry and therefore it is important to know the benchmarks you're using.
• Conversion Rate:Tells you the amount of users who took you up on the email's promotion. If you email promoting an upcoming webinar the conversion rate will be the amount of people who registered to attend the webinar. Conversion rate is a key metric because it indicates the effectiveness of your email campaigns in generating leads.
• Bounce Ratio:Is the total number of messages sent which were not able to be delivered to the inbox of the recipient. Too high of a bounce rate or rising bounce rate may indicate problems with your sender reputation.
• list growth rate:List-growth rate is a measure of how quickly your email list expands. Subscribers will naturally unsubscribe from your emails in time (which is good in the event that they're not the best for your list) therefore it's crucial to keep adding new subscribers regularly. Calculate the growth rate of your list by subtracting the number of subscribers who have been added minus the amount of subscribers who have unsubscribed and dividing it by the number of email addresses in your list, then multiplied by 100.
•    Open Rate:   The open rate (the quantity of recipients who read your emails) was one of the most straightforward emails metrics that you could use to assess the performance of your marketing campaigns. But this is no anymore as of 2021. When Apple announced its    iOS 15 update        The company also launched a new "Mail Privacy Protection" function that
  
• Automatically downloads all images from emails
• hides IP addresses as well as the location of email recipients

This means that your emails to all subscribers that have iOS fifteen devices (iPhones and iPads Apple Watches) will appear as having been opened, whether or didn't. Because Apple iPhones account for around 48 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, and the majority of people check their emails through their phones, opening rates are exaggerated and are not accurate.

Although you may still utilize open rates to gauge marketing success, click-through rates as well as the other metrics listed in the previous paragraphs should be considered more important.

The bottom line on Optimizing the performance of your email marketing campaigns

Make sure your marketing funnel is filled with providing education at scale for your target audience through Plus.

Plus allows you to create leads and turn leads into customers through providing quality education throughout the entire process of the customer journey. It's so simple to use, that you're able to focus on driving demand, not worrying about technology. Additionally, you get a group that is committed in helping you make the most of your learning to attract and cultivate the leads.

Let Plus assist you to create leads, not more.