Have you ever felt:
- Frustrated, staring at a blank piece of paper (or Word doc!) trying to come up with content ideas for your next newsletter
- Challenged to send emails out on a regular basis
- Overwhelmed, you’re wearing all the hats in your business and struggle for time to get everything done
- Unsure as to where to start with planning what to send and how often to mail
You’re not alone.
Many marketing teams fly by the seat of their pants when it comes to email content. They think they need to send a monthly newsletter. Plus, there’s all the promos they want to send. Essentially, they’re winging it. Since email is one of the most powerful digital marketing channels, not having a well-documented and thought-out plan for your email program is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.
It’s important to really think about why you’re doing what you’re doing. What happens when you send out individual email campaigns without really knowing why or where you are going with them and your strategy? Without a clear plan, here’s what you can expect to see:
- Your email marketing results won’t be what you want to see
How can you know if you’re doing well when you don’t know what you’d like to achieve? How can you improve your results and move forward if you don’t know where you’ve been and where you’d like to be in the future?
A plan can help you track what you’re doing and understand the results of your email sends.
For example, in your email marketing plan, you should determine what content you will send to your audience and when. By linking this information back to your results from the associated campaigns, you can see the types of content/offers/categories of products that achieved the highest engagement which will help you to plan your content for the future and improve your results.
- Your email marketing is not connected with other parts of your business
Email marketing is not a channel that works solely independently from everything else in your business – it’s at its best when integrated with your other marketing. But without a plan, how will you know that you are providing a consistent message across your channels? Will you know how to send a campaign out at exactly the right time to support a sale or special offer being launched in your business?
A documented plan ensures that your email campaigns support and work hard to help you achieve your overall business goals.
- You can’t up-level your email marketing to include segmentation and automated campaigns (for example) because you quickly become overwhelmed with all the different emails and lists within your system
Implementing email campaigns with no cohesion and plan WILL lead to overwhelm very quickly. And the best returns from email marketing happen when you do level-up and start adding to your strategy beyond simple newsletters.
Imagine this: You have 4 different opt-ins that prospects could enter your email list through.Each of these sources of opt-ins needs to be treated slightly differently in order to maximise their potential. For example, some different opt-in offers need to deliver slightly different messaging depending on potential subscriber interests.
Just this example alone will result in 4 automated series. That’s in addition to your regular campaigns.
Now, let’s look at adding segmentation and automation in. Once that starts, the number of campaigns and variations of content you want to send increases, as does your revenue.
Are you starting to feel overwhelmed? Of course you are! All of those campaigns are difficult to keep track of. Instead, you can simplify with a plan. It will help you understand the campaign objectives for each email and what needs to be included in each.
- You waste hours/days trying to come up with content for your emails and don’t provide value
Working on each email individually means you have no cohesion between your messages. You also have to come up with content ideas every single time you want to send an email.
It’s not only time-consuming, but it can also be stressful coming up with content each time you want to draft an email. It’s also not very effective, and you may find yourself repeating content that you’ve already sent to subscribers before.
Instead, plan your content in advance. Then, you can ensure that each email works together and provides cohesive value and content. You can also generate a whole bunch of ideas at once and plan them out in advance so that when you come to actually write your content, you know exactly what you are writing about and you save a lot of time!
- You struggle to have consistency in your sends
If it isn’t firmly on your schedule, you may find that you struggle to consistently send out your emails. Being consistent is an important part of building trust with your subscribers, as well as staying top-of-mind. Make sure you plot out all of your manual sends (e.g. newsletters and special offer emails that are scheduled for a specific day) and plan backwards from that to ensure you know when you need to have created your content to ensure the email gets sent!
- You’re confused as to which Email Service Provider (ESP) to choose
Without knowing what you want to do with your email marketing as you move forward, how can you know what technology will best help and support you in implementing this strategy?
Make sure you have at least a rough plan in place so that you know which features of the ESPs you are looking at using are the most important to help you implement your campaigns and reach your goals.
Instead of making it up as you go along, what if you could:
- Save time by automating your sales funnel to create consistent leads/revenue for your business so that you can focus on the business you truly want to create
- Take the frustration, confusion and guesswork out of planning your newsletters, special offer emails, autoresponders and more!
- Be shown a step-by-step proven system to plan successful campaigns allowing you to increase the engagement with your emails and ensure you never fall behind with your sends again due to not knowing what to send and when
- Be taken from overwhelm to clarity
You can with an email marketing plan.
Planning out your email marketing and setting clear objectives for both your regular campaigns and automated emails is critical to getting results for your business.
At eFocus Marketing we help companies to create intelligent email marketing strategy plans that ensure their email marketing has the desired impact.
To get started with your email marketing plan, reach out to us today for a consultation.
