Email marketing consists of more than individual emails. For instance, you can also use various email automations to target customers. To get the most out of your emails, you need a strategy. In the strategy, you formulate a goal, email KPIs and more. In total, you perform four steps:
- Step 1: Formulate email objective
- Step 2: Define your customers and customer journey
- Step 3: Define how you will achieve your goal
- Step 4: Creating a plan of campaign
Step 1: Setting email marketing goals
The basis for a good email strategy is a goal. Did you know that an email strategy is part of your e-commerce marketing? Without a clear goal in mind, you can keep emailing all you want. However, you will keep firing with a shotgun without targeted results. At the risk of ending up in your customers' irritation zone. So always formulate one (or more) objective(s) for your e-mail marketing.
How do you define an objective for e-mail? First, you formulate an overarching marketing objective. From this basis, you then formulate the e-mail goal. This goal can be classified into one of the following three categories:
- Acquiring new customers and their dates
- Retaining current customers
- Driving traffic on your website and achieving more sales
Examples of e-mail marketing objectives
You always formulate an objective SMART: Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time-bound. These handles make your objective manageable. What does an email marketing objective look like in practice? Some examples:
- Within 6 months, we will have 50% more new customers compared to the same period last year.
- Within 1 year, 75% of our customers will have placed at least 2 orders.
- Within 1 year, our webshop traffic has increased by 50%.
đŸ’¡ Tip: set a goal for a maximum of one year. That way, you keep the goal clear for yourself. Need more direction? Then divide the goal into a number of sub-goals.
Email marketing KPIs
Once you have formulated the goal of your email marketing, determine which KPIs are important to monitor. A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) helps you gain more insight into the successes of campaigns. We list the most commonly used KPIs for you.
Open rate: the number of unique recipients who have opened the e-mail / the total number of successfully delivered e-mails x 100%
The open rate shows how interesting your target audience finds your emails. This measure is simple: the more recipients open your e-mail, the more interested they are in your content.
Note: ESPs charge you when you have too low an open rate. If too many recipients do not open your mail, you will be labelled ‘not interesting’ and will end up in spam more quickly. Focus on an open rate of at least 30%. Is your open rate lower? Consider excluding dormant recipients from mailings.
Click through rate (CTR): the number of clicks / the total number of successfully delivered e-mails x 100%
The click through rate shows how many recipients in your e-mail clicked on a link. Useful when you want to know how many recipients clicked.
Click-to-open rate: the number of unique recipients who clicked on a link in an e-mail / the total number of unique opens x 100%.
The click-to-open rate says more about the effectiveness of your message. Interesting to see how many contacts find your email relevant enough to not only open the email, but also click through.
Conversion rate: the number of converted recipients / the total number of successfully delivered emails x 100%
The number of recipients who completed the goal of your email. Is the purpose of your email to promote a specific product, brand or category? The conversion rate indicates how many recipients bought this specific product/brand/category.
Bounce rate: the number of bounces / the total number of successfully delivered emails x 100%
With the bounce rate, you monitor how clean your e-mail list is, but also what your sending reputation is. Indeed, a high bounce rate can also be caused by a poor sending reputation. You then often end up in spam.
Note: you always want to keep the bounce rate as low as possible. A bounce rate above 2% is worrying.
Unsubscribe rate: the number of unsubscribes / the total number of successfully delivered e-mails x 100%
The number of unsubscribes is a good indicator to check how relevant your emails are. Are your unsubscribes rising? Recipients no longer find you interesting. Take action based on the content of your emails, the sending times and frequency. Number of new subscribers
Besides your unsubscribes, the number of new registrants are interesting. The more subscribers, the more relevant you are.
Return On Investments (ROI): the revenues versus the costs of e-mail marketing
With ROI, you chart the return on investment of a channel. To calculate the ROI of e-mail marketing, you set the revenues against all the costs you incurred for e-mail marketing. Think of the subscription costs for your email software, but also staff hours.
đŸ’¡ Tip: Having trouble setting successful KPIs? Send your first emails and use this point as a baseline measurement.
Step 2: Capture customers and customer journey for email marketing strategy
To achieve your goal, you need to know who you are going to target for it. Who is your target audience? What is your target group's need? In which step of the customer journey is this group? Capture all the information about the target group in a persona. Have you already created a persona for your marketing plan? Then supplement it with relevant information on e-mail.
Tip: sometimes it is difficult to define one target group. In that case, create several target groups and record the corresponding information of each group in personas.
Step 3: Establish how you will achieve the email goal
After defining your customers, establish how you will achieve your email goal. You do this by answering three questions:
- How will you approach the target audience?
- What will the message be?
- How will you spread this message?
How do you approach the target group?
To successfully approach a target group, take into account the corresponding phase of the customer journey in this step. You do not approach a person in the awareness phase in the same way as a customer in the "upsell" phase.
When determining this, think for instance about the tone of voice of your message. An example:
My target audience consists of customers who are in the ‘Retain’ phase. My message should be convincing and at the same time show appreciation for my existing customers.
What will the message be?
The second step is to flesh out the message. Make sure that the message fits well with the previously established goal. A few examples:
- Goal: Within 6 months, we will have 50% more new customers compared to the same period last year. - Message: All new customers receive a 10% discount by signing up for the newsletter.
- Goal: Within 1 year, 75% of our customers will have placed at least 2 orders. - Message: All customers receive a discount on a second order.
- Goal: Within 1 year, traffic on our webshop has increased by 50%. - Message: Customers receive inspiring content, such as how-to's and instructions for their purchased product.
How will you spread the message?
Spreading your message can be done via a single e-mail, but also a full campaign consisting of several e-mails or e-mails combined with other channels.
How you spread your message depends (again) on the phase of the customer journey. A customer in the ‘Consideration’ phase needs a reminder, while a customer in the ‘Ambassador’ phase is not served by multiple e-mails in a row. Take this into account. Put yourself in the customer's shoes and work out your strategy accordingly.
Emails tailored to each stage of the customer journey
đŸ’¡ Tip: As you can see in the image, a number of campaigns overlap with different phases of the customer journey. To target customers from different stages separately, segment your target audience.
Step 4: The plan of action for the e-mail marketing strategy
You conclude the e-mail marketing strategy with a plan of action. Here you record all the agreements that are important for achieving your goal(s). Think, for example:
- Tasks and responsibilities. Who does what? Will you keep the e-mail marketing under your own management or will you outsource it to a marketing agency? Also dwell on the GDPR legislation here.
- The corporate identity of the emails. What should each e-mail look like (approximately)? Which components should recur in each e-mail?
- A schedule. Which parts of the strategy will you implement when? Will you work out the entire strategy first, or will you put email campaigns live in between?
- Determine the frequency of emails. Do you plan to set up multiple e-mail campaigns (possibly per target group)?
- A newsletter schedule. Are you going to send newsletters? Then also create an e-mail planning, or add newsletters to your content calendar.
Maintain and update your email strategy
With the above four steps, your email strategy is complete. Don't lose sight of the strategy while implementing it. Do you notice over time that the chosen course no longer matches your current insights? Don't be afraid to update your strategy.
