Have you decided that it is time to try email marketing, but aren’t sure where to begin? For starters you need an email marketing plan! This will help you develop a strategy and ensure that your email marketing will be a success. Luckily, an email marketing plan is not nearly as scary as it sounds. If you are ready to try to market your business or service, remember the following 5 tips for making an email marketing plan.
1. Figure Out Who Your Readers Are
In order for email marketing to be successful it is necessary to figure out who your readers are. By doing this you will know who you should be emailing and you won’t waste your time trying to market to people who won’t be interested in your emails. You can figure out who your readers are by thinking about what exactly you are trying to sell or offer and who will most likely want it. For example, if you are trying to market pet treats, you should target adults with families or senior citizens living on their own as they are more likely to have pets than a college student living in a dorm or a senior citizen living in an assisted living facility. If you are having problems figuring out who would be interested in receiving emails from you regarding what you are trying to market, consider sending out a brief survey to people that you think would be interested in order to receive useful feedback. In the survey, encourage them to inform you of others that you think would be interested even if they aren’t. Remember that word of mouth is a great free tool that you should utilize whenever possible.
2. Determine What Your Purpose Is
You can only determine your email marketing plan by first determining what your purpose is. By not having a purpose you will be wasting your time and any email marketing you do will only have limited success. Your emails should have your purpose in mind in order to make them successful. If you are trying to spread the word about your business without any high pressure sales tactics, then it is in your best interest to take a gentle approach and not make the recipients feel as if they have to buy your product. If you are wanting others to reach out to find out more about what you are selling then you need to give them just a tidbit of information about your product by highlighting the key points of it, and encouraging the email recipients to contact you to find out more information about it. You can even encourage your recipients to contact you by offering them a free product if they do so. Even a pen or small trinket can be a substantial incentive to encourage others to contact you.
3. Make Short And Long Term Goals
Short and long term goals will help you when creating an email marketing plan. They will allow you to develop strategies for your plan and figure out the best ways to reach your goals. For example, you could determine that a short term goal would be the amount of emails that you can send out in a week. A long term goal could be an increase of business in a 6 month period of time. There are no right or wrong goals for your business. You just need to determine what will suit your needs and what will work with your email marketing plan. Remember that over time your email marketing plan may change as you receive feedback from recipients.
4. Create A Timeline For Your Email Marketing Plan
A successful email marketing plan should have a timeline that you stick to. By making a timeline you will set deadlines for things to be done. This will ensure that everything gets done and that the marketing plan doesn’t just fall to the wayside and be forgotten as you go on with daily tasks of your business. Your timeline should be specific, but allow for adjustments if needed. If it is too rigid then you may get discouraged if you are a day or two late for completing certain tasks on the timeline. As you are creating your plan you need to remember that it may change as you establish your short and long term goals and tweak certain areas.
5. Decide The Frequency You Want To Send Out Your Emails
When creating an email marketing plan it is necessary to decide how often you want to send out emails. If you are simply wanting to let potential customers know about a new product it may only be necessary to send out one or two emails. If you are letting others know about new products but want to keep them informed about other things related to your business, then the emails should be ongoing. The key is to not send out so many emails that your recipients are annoyed by them, but not send out so few emails that the recipient don’t even pay attention to them.
