Can You Please Rate This Email Strategy, Please?

How many email campaigns do you have going on at the same time?  Is Angie handling the weekly sales campaigns with at least 5 different segments per run? Nat is working on a re-engagement project with hopes to have it ready way before Thanksgiving. You’re gearing up for the Christmas newsletter.  Does Angie, Nat and the rest of the team all plan the same, use the same mindset when it comes to content development and workflow optimization?

What is your email team’s production methodology?   Does your email strategy go something like this:

The Plan

The team starts off with a clear defined goal.  What type of call-to-action do you want your subscriber to take?  Who does this mailing go to?  How many A/B tests will be run?  How will it be measured in terms of success or failure?

Assign Steps for Success

Keep track of who does what and when it’s supposed to be done: keep the team on target to meet the deadlines.
Who is responsible for the list(s) you’re working with?  Are they clean and up to date?
Do you write the content and code the emails yourself or are your managing someone else?

Define the Concept

Email creation can be complicated.  Is content just as important as the colors and graphics you use?  Whether you’re writing the content yourself or editing the messages sent, the email should speak to the audience, with a positive uplifting tone.   Keep the call-to-action clear.
The team may want to critique the competitor’s emails; discuss what are they doing right and what they are doing wrong.  Compare the findings with your concept.

Collaboration

If you have a team, make is easy to plan together.  Create a discussion list, with the same ESP you’re mailing with.   A discussion list is an efficient way for your team to interact over email where they can share information and provide communication to their group members.

Quality assurance

Review your completed email before you send them out.  Does it have an unsubscribe link?  Everything spelled correctly, sentence structure correct?   Does it follow your checklist? (You did create one right?)

During the workflow process your team will probably find the biggest task is the design of the emails.  There will be many tests and edits before the final design for each campaign is chosen.   And there are many ways to design an email including self-coding or templates, to using a program to layout your concept and images; i.e. Photoshop.   Make sure you block off the time needed to create the desired designs in order to keep on schedule.

Defining your email marketing campaign strategy and goals will help guide the directions of your campaign and makes it easier to measure the success of your efforts.

Easily create an excel check list for your team using some of the following headings:

1. Date: October 1 2016
2. Assigned To:  Angie in Sales
3. Goal: Clicks to our website to Sale landing page
4. Topic/Subject:  Sale of the Century
5. Target Audience: Anyone who purchased summer clothes in the last 60 days
6. List and Segments:  Men, Women, Teens
7. Included Urls, Links and Forms:  Landing page URL, set to track Refer a Friend. Link to preference page.
8. Social Media Links:  Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Google+
9. Design:  1 HTML responsive. 3 columns, 2 graphics, Tahoma fonts, Red, White, Blue, 1 plain text email
10. A/B Split Testing; Multiple tests simultaneously to a small sampling of members, including change to Subject Line, colors, fonts, time of day, position of graphics, different graphics.
11. A/B Split Testing Results. More clicks on all blue with comic font emails sent on Monday at 3 pm.
12. Reports: How many Emails were sent, delivered, opened.  Did the CTA work?
13. Analyze Reports:  Open goals met?  Click-through goals met?  Bounced report reviewed and acted on.

Any email campaign, big or small will be more successful when you define a goal and plan the steps to reach it.  In other words, once you set your goals, define your strategy and plan your steps, a check list will help you keep on track.  I hope you found my checklist helpful.

What else can you add?  Please comment below.