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1
DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE
Before you start putting together your eMail campaign, you probably want to define your audience. Once you get a good idea of who's reading your messages, it’ll be easier to decide what you want to say to them.
• Who do you want to be the primary readers of your eMail campaigns?
• Industry leaders and peers?
• Current and potential customers?
• Family and friends?
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2
DETERMINE YOUR PURPOSE
Now that you know who you’re talking to, you can outline the overarching purpose of your eMail marketing. Your purpose is the reason you’re sending people eMail communication at all.
Your purpose answers the following questions:
• Why does this audience want to hear from me?
• What useful information can I provide to this audience?
• What do I want to accomplish with my email marketing?
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3
ESTABLISH YOUR GOALS
Defining a few goals is an important part of a marketing plan. Goals give you a way to assess whether your marketing efforts are successful or not. Goals will vary—you might want to increase subscribers for the first year or focus on increasing click-rates. Eventually you may want to set your goals around increasing online sales or repeat sale.
Brainstorm what you hope to get out of your eMail marketing over the next six months or so. Then write down three things:
• Your goal
• How you’ll achieve your goal
• How you’ll measure your goal
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4
PLAN YOUR FREQUENCY
Sit down with your calendar—personal and business—and think about what frequency makes sense for your audience and your content. We recommend that you eMail your list at least monthly, but don’t feel the need to commit to that immediately. Feel free to skip a month if you don’t have anything truly useful to say.
You probably don’t want to go more than a couple months without contacting your subscribers, because they may forget that they opted-in to receive eMails from you and might report you as a spammer. You don’t want to send too frequently either, or subscribers will feel overloaded with eMails and may unsubscribe or, worse, report you as a spammer.
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5
ANALYZE YOUR NUMBERS
You’ve imported your list, created a beautiful eMarketing campaign and sent it to your loyal subscribers. Now it’s time to sit back, relax and watch your reports come in.
Unlike print or traditional direct marketing, eMail marketing allows you to track how many people opened your email campaigns and see exactly what they clicked. Watching your stats is fun because you get to see how your campaigns performed, but it’s useless if you don’t understand how they work and how you can use them to improve your campaigns going forward.
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