Email Marketing Guide For The Busiest Marketer

Email marketing is one of the cornerstones of every marketing plan. It is one of the most popular ways businesses use to reach out to their customers and keep them up to date. And with the number of worldwide email accounts worldwide predicted to climb to 4 billion in 2020, this winning strategy won’t be going anywhere. In this blog, we will discuss an Email Marketing Guide for the busiest Marketer!

Marketing Strategy

When implemented properly, it takes time. And for those of us who are extremely busy with no supporting team, things can get pretty overwhelming pretty quickly. However, if you get organized and use the right tools even the busiest marketer can have a comprehensive and seamless marketing strategy that moves their business plan forward.

Let’s look at how you can quickly and efficiently apply your email marketing plan:

Do it in Batches

The first thing you should consider doing when your time for marketing is limited is to complete portions of your marketing plan in batches. Once per quarter take a few hours or an afternoon to set up the entire quarter (3 months) of your marketing plan. That means:

• Preparing three months’ worth of content
• Automating upcoming marketing email campaigns
• Automating your follow-ups, triggered emails, drip campaigns, and email receipts

Now, this may sound like a lot to do in one day but with the hacks I discuss below you’ll fly through this.

Let the Data Guide You

Firstly, figure out what kind of emails you are going to send. This all comes down to a well laid out marketing plan. It should tell you what topics to cover, the kind of content to make, who you should send it to, and when.

But where do you find this information? You already have it. It’s all in the data.

Analyze

Take a look at your data and analyze it before you start any plan. Check out what your audience is reading, what they are clicking on, and what they are downloading. Make informed decisions based on their interests and actions. Then segment your audience based on these actions rather than by demographics.

Data

Also, take a look at your sales data. What are the best sellers? Which products or services usually get bought together? Is there an order in which consumers buy your products? (i.e. first they will buy a fishing pole then they will buy tackle) This sales data is also a great wealth of information to guide you toward the emails you should be sending.

A/B Testing

Next makes sure that you do some A/B testing. It will help you with the finer details, like what colour a click-through button should be or what preview text you should use on your emails. Test everything to ensure that the emails you send will return the best results.

Lastly, listen to your audience. Collect ratings, reviews and check social media to dial in on their conversations. Let your consumers tell you exactly what they want.

Pre-make Your Marketing

Content

Now let’s look at the behemoth that is content. Blogs, whitepapers, eBooks, website updates, articles, it’s a lot of writing and you are already busy! Writing just one blog can be a daunting task, so, how can you manage to produce three months’ worth of content in one go?

The answer is outsourcing.

Outsource your content to writers, bloggers and guest writers. Use the topics laid out in your marketing plan and send them to an outsourced writer a quarter in advance, so that when you are ready to set them up your content is all ready to go.

However, if you would rather not spend any money on outsourcing, there are a couple of other ways to achieve the same effect.

Divvy it up

• Divide it up amongst your team. Make sure that you stay a few months ahead of the deadline and give each of your team members a piece of content to write. That doesn’t just mean the marketing team, have the sales team, customer service team and leadership teams pitch in. Their expertise will make for some pretty compelling content.

Get a Head Start

• If your various departments are too busy to give you a polished piece of content (which will probably be the case) have them give you a head start. They can start it off and you can take the baton and carry it over the finish line. Editing some rough content into a finished product is far easier than starting from scratch.

Recycle

• Reuse your old content. You probably already have content lying around waiting to be used. If you have large pieces of content that you have used before, break it down into smaller pieces in different forms. For example, if you have a white paper or an eBook, those can be broken down into several blogs.
  • Turn your existing blogs into videos.
  • Turn your reports into infographics.
  • You already have everything you need.

Get creative and turn what you already have into what you need!

Design

The other difficult piece to setting up your email campaigns is the design element. Having to start your email or newsletter design from scratch each time will take up a lot of unnecessary time. Instead, try designing a template that can quickly and easily be applied to each email.

You can even try multiple templates if you have several different types of email campaigns that you send out i.e. newsletters, new blog notifications, triggered emails and email receipts. Have them all designed beforehand for quick and easy application.

When designing your email template consider the following:

• Make it dynamic
• Use smart content and buttons
• Test your preview text
• Make everything shareable
• Embed a survey for instant feedback

Automate Everything

Now that you have your content ready it’s time to automate and we’re gonna automate everything!

With automation, you can work smarter, not harder. Let’s start with your campaign flow. Keep it simple. Especially when it comes to more complex campaigns like drip campaigns and triggered emails. Start with a few simple steps and then add to it over time.

With automation, you can do so much. You can automatically:

• Schedule a premade email for a specific date and time
• Trigger email receipts based on specific actions:
  • Filling out a form
  • Downloading content
  • Clicking a call-to-action button
• Personalize emails
  • Use first and last names
  • Send birthday gifts
  • Send reminders i.e. for renewals or appointments
• Capture leads from your forms and social media platforms for your email list
• Manage your email list
• Segment your audience
  • Example:
    • Automatically separate email recipients who didn’t open the email from those who opened and didn’t click and those who clicked through.
    • Then automatically resend the same email to those who didn’t open, send an incentive to those who opened and didn’t click, and a follow-up or continuation to those who clicked through.

You can truly set yourself up with a seamless email marketing campaign with all of the hard work on the front end and minimal monitoring.

With this guide, even the busiest marketer should be able to achieve their goals. If you want to find out more about the tools you can use to make your email marketing quicker and easier, contact us below to talk to one of our experts today! We’ll find the solution that works best for your business.