For any email marketing program to be successful, it needs to have a few key systems in place. These systems help to streamline messaging, track engagement, understand the customer journey, and more. Without these systems, it would be nearly impossible to get the results that you’re looking for from your email marketing program.
Building your list with your Target Audience
One of the most important aspects of a successful email marketing program is having an email list of people who are actually interested in your product (think quality over quantity!). You need to understand who your target audience is and what kind of content they’re looking for.
Build your list by talking to these types of people online and offering value. This can be in the form of a free ebook, tool, or video in exchange for their emails. This will help you send emails to people who are interested in what you have to offer. (AKA, higher engagement rates). Bypassing this important step would be like paying for a billboard in LA that talks about an event happening in San Francisco. You may have some SF residents passing by that can take advantage, but LA dwellers will disregard. Relevance is key and building out organized systems in email marketing helps you streamline that.
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Systems in Email Marketing: Engagement Tracking
Another key system that’s necessary for a successful email marketing program is engagement tracking. This helps you to understand how your subscribers are interacting with your emails. Are they opening them? Clicking through to your website? Subscribing to your list? Engagement tracking can help you to identify which parts of your email marketing program are working well and which parts need improvement. Hint: A great way to find insights faster is in the next paragraph!
Start by creating segments or lists in your email program that tracks how many people have engaged with email in the past 30, 60, 90 days. Update this number week over week to see how engagement changes in your list. This will help you spot when engagement is low so you can test for new opportunities. More on that below!
A/B Testing Program for Subject Lines, CTAs and More
This helps you to test different versions of your emails so that you can see what works best with your audience. By building a system that continuously tests and improves your emails, you can ensure that you’re always getting the best results possible from your email marketing campaigns.
Hot Tip:
Work smarter, not harder. Auto-optimize your emails when you A/B test so only the best-performing content is continually sent out to your list.
Start your A/B testing program by making a list of all elements to test in an email. Here is our list to get started:
- Subject line
- Preheader
- Email Body (copy or design)
- From Name/Sender
Remember, a true A/B test is an experiment that tests one element at a time. Start with a subject line test for one campaign and determine a winner before moving on to a different part of the email.
Hot Tip:
Redesign your emails every quarter. Doing so introduces new HTML elements to ensure your email deliverability is in good hands. Learn More.
Systems in Email Marketing: Customer Journey and Lifecycle Tracking
Nurture emails are a crucial part of any email marketing program, but many businesses don’t understand their purpose. Nurture emails are designed to build relationships with customers over time by providing value. By sending regular nurture emails, you can ensure your customers stay engaged with your brand and continue to grow with your business. It’s important to understand the customer journey and lifecycle around email marketing in order to create effective nurture emails.
The customer lifecycle in marketing starts with acquiring new customers and ends with retaining them. The customer lifecycle for email starts when a customer is first acquired and ends when they unsubscribe or stop interacting with your emails. Creating a system, or in this case a flow, of nurture emails can start any customer journey off on the right foot and keep them engaged or better yet purchasing for the long haul.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and great email systems aren’t created overnight! We’ve tested and tried a variety of systems to make sure we are efficiently producing the highest ROI possible for our clients. What works for one business may not work for yours. Strategies differ and that’s why it’s crucial to take the time and build out your own system for your audience, product or service, and end goals.
Need help organizing it all or knowing where to start? Reach out to hello@wayfinderdigital.co to schedule a discovery call! Follow us on social for weekly email tips.