As marketers, we’re still talking about email, because it still works. If email marketing isn’t currently a part of your overall content strategy, the business case for inclusion is worth consideration, most notably from an ROI vantage point.
If you’re looking to revamp or launch your company’s email marketing strategy, below are 6 tips to get the ball rolling, including a template download for your first email welcome series.
- The Foundation: Always, always, start with your business goals. A marketing strategy should be built around that, not the other way around. From there, build a set of content pillars to guide the creation of all content your company puts out into the world. While there is no shortage of valuable topics to engage on, picking a handful of topics and covering them well builds more momentum than saying a little about a lot of things over time.
- Build Your Initial Content Library: Once you have your pillars in place, create several polished content pieces to start your resources library, and find a home for them on your website in the form of a blog/news/insights page. You can continue to add to it over time, but before you start driving traffic to these resources, it’s helpful to have a good representation of the value that you’re offering, to keep people coming back.
- Leverage a CRM: Using a customer relationship management platform does wonders for keeping your contacts in order and automating the email process. The design capabilities allow for a finished email product that is professional and user-friendly. We’ve used HubSpot and Mailchimp at Raven Creative, but there are several options available.
- Grow Your Email List: In addition to your current customers who have opted-in to receive email communications from you (be sure to honor applicable global email regulation laws and consult your legal team with questions), embed email opt-in forms strategically throughout your site, where interested individuals can provide basic information to receive news and resources from your business. You can also promote gated content on your site that provides a valuable resource to an individual via email.
- Set up a Welcome Series: When someone opts in to receive email from your organization, it provides a great opportunity to reinforce that initial connection by welcoming them and delivering value right off the bat. A welcome series is a workflow of emails that is triggered and automatically sent to a new subscriber at predetermined intervals. These emails not only keep your brand top of mind, but help the subscriber learn more about you and experience your value first-hand. Remember those business goals? Write your welcome series content with your end-game in mind.
Get some inspiration for your first welcome series with this email copy template.
- Establish Regular Distribution Cadence: When you’re up and running, find your distribution groove. Regular communications help build that know/like/trust factor that is essential to customer acquisition and retention. While there is no magic bullet for exactly how often and when to send these communications, always err on the side of quality over quantity.
Whew! We covered a lot of ground pretty fast there. If you have questions about starting or revamping an email marketing strategy for your business, let’s talk!
