So the past month I’ve been chipping away at an email strategy book. With the merger into One to One, I’ve emailmarketinganhouradaybeen placed into our email and widget division. So, I figured I could use a little more info around email strategy.

Email is the most cost-efficient marketing medium available today. According to the book, every $1 spent on email marketing can represent $48 in revenue. But it doesn’t start with a beautifully laid out design, it begins by delivering of the five types of messages at the right time.

Here are the top 10 points that were worth noting:

  1. The Five types of email –
    • Awareness – To make the customer aware of your product.
    • Consideration – To bring your company into consideration with y0ur purpose.
    • Conversion – To close the deal and drive customers to sales channels.
    • Product Usage – The upsell – stimulate interest in other products and services
    • Retention and Loyalty – Broaden and deepen the relationship (Create loyalty for people to recommend to their friends or providing related insight and helpful tips.)
  2. Subject Lines
    • Less is more (50 characters).
    • Make it personal and special (Be the first to see our new fall collection.)
    • Don’t use capital letters, symbols. And avoid misleading.
    • Another note is that more detailed subject lines drive higher click rates, but more general subject lines drive higher open rates.
  3. Strategy
    • Begin with the end in mind
    • Develop acquisition, retention, and reactivation programs
    • Develop key performance indicators (e.g. open rate or sale conversions)
    • Focus and strategize based off of the email interaction behavior. e.g. Use split testing
    • Develop landing pages that are aligned and branded with your strategy
  4. Email acquisition strategy: Your email acquisition strategy should be a part of your overall email strategy. It is very important to increase your target market. You not only should list how to join your newsletter on your website, but look into campaigns such as SEM landing pages, call centers, offline promotions, trade shows, etc.
  5. Errors: Errors will happen. If the error will mislead, you should quickly follow up with a response. Not responding will do more damage.
  6. Viral Marketing – Viral marketing can be sales-related and effective if delivered at appropriate times.  To do this right, you must build trust, speak to your customers – not over them, make friends with thought leaders, make it easy to spread your word, and always make it a two-way dialogue. On a side note, I like how Seth Godin uses email to push email to his subscriber base. And I then forward it to friends.
  7. Email Content:
    • Don’t assume your message is compelling. Why do your subscribers care?
    • Make sure your primary message is “Above the Fold” (in the preview pane).
    • Email is about content, not design. Design is the icing on the cake
    • Always use Alt images for people who block images.
    • Don’t forget your physical address,  your unsubscribe, and perhaps other channels of marketing (e.g. follow on twitter).
  8. Brand equity – If your brand equity is low, use email marketing to build trust. This will change your approach if it were higher since you cannot rely solely on your brand to get open rates. You must build trust and set expectations, such as showing what type of newsletter a person will receive and a welcome email.

You should also break the rules, but not the law. Always follow CAN-Spam compliance, which includes provide an unsubcribe link and a physical address on each of your emails.

The world of email is constantly changing, and you must stay on top of it. I’ve listed a few sites you may find interesting: emailstatcenter.com, mediapost.com (email blog),  marketingprofs.com.