How do you plan your email marketing campaign?

We recently concluded our multi-city email marketing workshop series on “Mission 365 – Right Content, People and Time” in Delhi. The workshop, held on July 25^th, witnessed full-day presence of 65 marketers from 50+ brands. The entire session & group activities were well planned & executed immaculately by netCORE’s Sr. Consultant, Mr Avadhoot Revankar. Thank you Delhiites, for appreciating the session & being an engaging audience! You rock as always!

As the workshop title says “Mission 365 – Right Content, People and Time”, the session highlighted the importance of “planning” in email marketing. The old saying “Success is 90% planning & 10% execution” is even applicable to email marketing. Before even logging into the email marketing tool, a marketer needs to spend several days & hours planning and conceptualizing a campaign to get the desired results.

Though the components involved in planning an email marketing campaign might vary based on business and their objectives, the below mentioned elements will hold true under any circumstance.

2 key elements in planning an email marketing campaign are:

1. Campaign Calendar

A campaign calendar is like an annual or quarterly marketing plan where you define and prioritize your marketing activities and spends based on some research, past year’s successes and future experimental activities. A campaign calendar disciplines you, provides a roadmap to all the team members and also helps to tie your email campaigns into your broader set of marketing activities without operating in silos.

Few things to consider when preparing a campaign calendar are

• Connect the event or occasions which compliment brand’s values
• Take the road less travelled, don’t go for the run of the mill common occasions and events
• Keep space for real-time campaigns which are based on market happenings
• Keep a track of your competition

2. Segment and target with personalized and relevant content

Like no two humans have the same exact face, all your customers are also not the same. They belong to different age groups, income groups, geography and have different interests. Defining a segment helps you group contacts with similar attributes together for relevant targeting.

Few things to consider when segmenting your contacts are:

• Spend time with data. You don’t need to be a data scientist for the same
• Go beyond obvious segments by combining email activity behavior, website browsing behavior and transaction trends
• Personalize your content beyond just name to reflect the recipient’s specific interests

Having these two elements in place will help you plan your email marketing campaigns better thus improving your campaign performance and finally the ROI.

Does your email marketing plan consist of any other elements? Do let us know in the comments below.

PS: The last leg of this workshop series will be held in Bangalore on 7^th Aug. To attend, register now

Also, we are planning another series of workshops on email marketing.  Suggest topics here