Email Marketing Strategy: A Checklist

Successful email marketing strategy requires a well thought out plan of action. Which building blocks belong to this and which questions you should ask yourself, I show you in this article.

1. What goals do I pursue with my e-mail marketing?

With clearly defined goals, email campaigns can be planned much better. In addition, they form the basis for optimizing your subsequent mailings and thus help you to be more successful. It is important to set qualitative as well as quantitative goals.

The following questions can help:

• Do I want to attract more customers?

• Do I want to strengthen customer loyalty?

• Do I want to promote sales?

• Do I want to support processes?

• Do I want to relieve resources?

2. Which key figures help me to measure my success?

A big strength of email marketing is its very good measurability. Take advantage of this: Success can be measured by means of various key figures. In addition to certain KPIs, it is necessary to define a timeframe for the measurement of success. That's the only way to get enough data for optimization.

These KPIs can be helpful in the assessment of success:

• open rate. Read these 8 tips to improve your email open rate.

• CTR. Apply these 12 tips to boost your click through rate.

• website visitors

• buyers

• New newsletter subscribers

• Recipient reactions after opening the newsletter such as Downloads or subscriptions for seminars, webinars, etc.

• Conversion rate

3. Which target groups do I want to reach?

In addition to clearly defined goals, a target group analysis is essential in advance. The effort is worth it, because only then your messages get delivered directly and successfully to the right recipients. The following questions are relevant for determining the target groups:

• Who are my customers and recipients?

• What does my customer like?

• Why is he a customer with me?

• What data do I have about the individual customers or recipients and may I use these?

In the next step, the target groups should be transferred into personas: better content adjustments can further reduce the wastage.

4. Which mailing formats are suitable for my goals?

Once goals and target groups have been defined, the question arises as to the right mailing formats. Because depending on the objective, a completely different mailing format can be interesting. A distinction is made between data and content formats.

Data formats are:

• HTML

• Multi-Part

• text

Content formats are:

• Standalone mailing

• Newsletter

• series mailings

• trigger mailings

• transaction mailings

5. Technical infrastructure and the appropriate e-mail marketing tool

The right tool is important for implementing the email marketing strategy. Requirements for this include, among other things, your goals, your budget and your existing technical infrastructure. The following questions may help in the selection of the tool:

• What other systems are in use that need to be linked to the email marketing tool? Not all systems have the right interfaces.

• The most important goals and the most important field of application.

• The requirements for service, support and technical and operational support?

• What is the budget?

• What know-how is there in the company?

• Functionalities of the tool: the must-haves, the nice-to-haves.

Anyone who deals with these questions before the start of an email marketing strategy and can check off as many points as possible, will use the email as a successful tool in

the online marketing mix. The checklist also helps to rethink and reorient the existing email marketing strategy.