Must-have 1: Personalisation strategy

People love personalised marketing. It makes them feel valued, special and understood as individuals. Personalised marketing takes into account the unique preferences, behaviours, and interests of each person. This allows for more relevant and engaged communication. Consumers are more likely to pay attention and respond to a message when they feel it was crafted specifically for them. This can lead to increased engagement, such as clicking through to a website, making a purchase, or sharing it with friends and family.

One of the key advantages of email marketing is the ability to target specific audiences with tailored messages. Especially in the early days of your relationship, you need to make sure your brand has something good to offer to grab their attention. For example, providing valuable information your prospects find useful. Personalise your e-mails with the recipient’s name to make them feel valued, and segment your list based on their interests. You can use handy tools like link tracking in your email to know where your subscriber clicks. This information can be used to promptly engage with potential customers or to categorise your segmented lists in the future. Surveys are an additional means of gathering data for segmentation. By conducting surveys, you can obtain personal information to tailor your messaging to individual contacts, as well as gain insight into their key inquiries or pain points with the process. This depends on what you will ask them, it could be as straightforward as asking for their email preferences, so you know where you can set the limits.

Must-have 2: Measuring and monitoring

Measuring and monitoring the success of an email marketing strategy is essential for making data-driven decisions. After all, the only way to structurally improve your ROI is by closely tracking the effectiveness of your campaigns. Clearly define your email marketing goals and determine what metrics you will use to measure success. Track key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and subscriber churn rates to gain insights into your email campaign’s performance. By analysing the results, you will be able to see which types of emails are resonating with your audience and adjust your strategy accordingly.

By using A/B testing, you can compare different versions of your emails and determine what elements lead to the best results, making changes to subject lines, content, design, and other elements to improve your results. Monitoring deliverability and analysing your results allows you to make data-driven changes to improve your email marketing strategy over time. By identifying what’s working and optimizing your campaigns, you can drive more conversions and ROI from your email efforts.

Must-have 3: Set up for two-way communication

Two-way communication with customers is important in understanding their needs and preferences, and building that strong relationship. Email marketing is the perfect tool to communicate with your audience to solicit customer feedback, helping to better understand customer needs and preferences and to make improvements to products, services, and customer experience. Encourage communication by asking for feedback and responding to customer inquiries, or sending questionnaires to get to know them better. This can help build that much-needed trust and show customers that their opinions and input are valued. Ultimately, creating a base for a stronger relationship.

Must-have 4: Loyalty programs

Once customers have discovered a brand and have had positive experiences with the product or service, you will want to create loyalty to your brand. Email marketing can be used to provide personalised, relevant content and offers to create brand loyalty. This can include special promotions or discounts for repeat customers, updates on new products and services, and exclusive content or early access to events and sales. Additionally, email marketing can be used to provide customers with information on special offers, discounts, or promotions that are relevant to their purchase, and to upsell or cross-sell complementary products. For example, loyalty programs by sports clubs, generally not only reward purchases but stimulate other types of interactions for fans with their favourite clubs. Think newsletter subscription, contests, traffic to social media channels and exclusive offers for merchandise that are not available to others. These are great ways to keep not only sports fans but also your audiences engaged. Reward them for their dedication. Maintaining strong direct communication and relationship with customers through email marketing can play a key role in ensuring customer loyalty.

Must-have 5: Stimulate customer advocacy

Obviously, your ultimate goal, besides conversion, is to turn your customer into an active advocate for your brand. They will make repeat purchases, give great reviews, refer their friends and generate the most powerful kind of marketing there is: word-of-mouth. Organisations can benefit greatly from customer endorsements, as they can lead to increased brand awareness and provides social proof.

Customer endorsement works like a tipping point that can encourage more customers to share their experiences and opinions about your brand and promote your social media. Featuring user-generated content in your emails, you can show potential customers how much your current customers love your brand, and inspire them to become advocates as well. Providing value beyond just selling products and instead sharing useful content, will have them stick around for a lot longer than just that one purchase.

On the way to email marketing success

Considering these must-haves when setting up your email strategy will help you strengthen those relations: test, measure and optimise. Test different elements of your email campaigns, such as subject lines, offers, and calls to action, to see what resonates with your audience. Use data and insights to continually improve your email marketing efforts, and you will definitely be well on the way to driving better results.