6-Step Email Marketing Checklist To Get You Started
Email marketing is an effective channel to grow your business if done right. It has proven itself as an excellent tool to increase sales and customer retention over the years.
Despite changing trends, it allows you to connect with existing and interested customers in a highly targeted, cost-effective way.
Apart from that, prioritizing email marketing early in your business allows you to discover the buying behavior of your customers which leads to successful marketing campaigns.
Compared to paid advertising, you never have to worry about not reaching your audience because of social media accounts getting shut down, not meeting advertising standards, or not having a big advertising budget.
As an email marketing agency, we aim to help businesses get on the right track with their email marketing program to avoid future problems that may hurt their business.
Here’s a quick guide for business owners who want to optimize their email marketing channel.
1. Choose An Email Service Provider (ESP)
You have many options for your email service provider. Be sure to carefully select which one is right for your business from the get-go, since shifting from one to the other can be quite a headache.
Review their features and choose which one you think is the best for your needs. Here are some criteria to help you decide:
Cost-effective
Marketing automation
Integrations with third-party apps
Design options
Ease of use/Interface
Data analytics & reporting features
Customer support
Based on our experience, Klaviyo has been the best for most of our clients in the e-commerce space. However, we also use other providers that best cater to the needs of the businesses we work with.
2. Identify Your Goals
Whenever you begin utilizing a marketing channel, you should have a clear understanding of your goals, purpose, and measure of success. In email marketing, knowing these will help you create effective campaigns, flows, and other strategies needed to propel your efforts forward.
A great way to approach this is to use the S.M.A.R.T method. Plan your goals and objectives to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.
Remember that email marketing is part of your overall marketing strategy. It should align with the rest of your marketing efforts to drive more impact on your overall results.
3. Build Your Subscriber List
An engaged subscriber list is one of the foundations of effective email marketing. A great place to start is by converting your website visitors into subscribers by using sign-up forms.
There are different types of sign-up forms. You can learn more about sign-up forms here.
Alternatively, you can run small ads for your audience to sign up for your email list.
4. Create Your Segments
Segments help you deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. Customers are fed up with generic emails that don’t resonate within their inboxes. They’re looking for personalized emails that align with where they are in their customer journey.
Segments you can start with are:
By website engagement
By email domain
By location
By interest
By purchase history
Always review your segments, optimize, and create more when needed, especially when identifying opportunities.
5. Set Up Your Workflows & Automations
Workflows allow you to send automated emails based on your customer’s behavior and help you engage with them at each touchpoint in the customer journey.
These personalized emails are triggered when they complete (or don’t) complete an action. An easy way to start with this is to review your customer journey and identify where automation makes sense.
Most brands start with:
Welcome flow
Abandoned Cart flow
Cross-sell/Upsell flow
First-purchase feedback flow
Sunset flow
Each of these flows has multiple emails that should be written and designed based on your brand’s overall branding to maintain consistency and further brand recognition.
6. Create Your First Campaign
Sending emails with the aim of keeping potential and existing customers interested and boosting sales is called an email marketing campaign.
Each email has a specific goal, such as persuading customers to sign up for something, book a call, read further, or add something to their cart.
These emails should be strategically sent to the right segment at the right time to maximize ROI. And just like emails in the workflows, they should follow the brand’s overall branding. Don’t forget to warm your domain before sending it to your full list.
Summary
Incorporating email marketing into your overall strategy can be a process, but the payoff is worth it. Our clients have found that having expert guidance and resources has made it much simpler.
At Strategy Maven, we strive to provide exceptional support to help our clients reach their email marketing objectives and beyond.
Book a free audit here if you need support in getting started with your email marketing.
