Engage or Disrupt

The development of a detailed email marketing strategy that is continuously optimized over time can lead to high ROI. Throughout this whitepaper, readers will learn not only why email is valuable to digital content activation, but also how to incorporate it into a holistic content marketing strategy.

Page Summary:

• What Is Email Marketing and Why Is It Valuable?
• The Three Types of Emails
• How to Develop Your Email Marketing Strategy

Email is a permission-based style of marketing that makes it easy to engage consumers with personalized and relevant content. According to a study by ExactTarget, 77 percent of consumers prefer to receive these permission-based marketing communications through their email.

However, marketers often struggle with low subscriber and engagement rates, inactive list members and unsubscribes. These roadblocks can diminish the effectiveness, but we have to keep in mind that the key to successful, high-yield email marketing lies within a strong email-marketing strategy based on gathered data and analytics.

While many believe that email is becoming an antiquated form of business communication in comparison to other channels, such as social media, it is still proving to be an effective way to drive consumers through the funnel. Many brands find that social and email-marketing strategies working together achieve greater success rates than either alone.

MarketingSherpa 2013 Email Marketing  Benchmark Report, www.marketingsherpa.com

Keep in mind that there are three different types of emails that can be used and should be tested based on the business goals and recipient responsiveness. These emails will serve different purposes and drive consumers to take different actions. Understanding the desired consumer behavior will help best determine which email type best suits a particular campaign.

Typically, all emails can be categorized into three segments:

• Promotional: Emails designed with a transactional goal. Typically, less text, more imagery and prominent CTAs to drive website traffic to purchase a product.
• Content Focused: Emails with more text, often with the goal of increasing awareness and interest in a brand. Establishes high-level exposure to a brand without having to visit a website.
• Seeded Content: Hybrid model that can build an e-commerce brand while maintaining the transactional value of a promotional email. Can provide content that can help educate the consumer.

• Establish business goals and rules: The first step in increasing email effectiveness is to establish your goals. Ask your team some key business questions at the outset of an email marketing campaign to determine what you want to accomplish and why.
• Designate a target audience: Understanding who your target audience is will dictate what content you create and how you distribute it. Emails should be designed for and dedicated to the recipient.
• Plan a distribution cadence: Establish how often you are going to send out your emails based on both the business goals and the audience. A distribution cadence will help maintain consistency and relevancy in the eyes of your audience.
• Observe and optimize content: Your content needs to be carefully monitored with each send in order to continuously improve performance and engagement. Testing and optimizing based on results should be an active and ongoing mandate for your strategy.
• Maintain lists: List governance is absolutely essential to a successful email marketing strategy. This should be done periodically; go into your lists once every quarter to see which recipients have been consistently engaging with content and which ones have not.
• Strive for low drop-off: Offer custom opt-out pages so customers can select exactly what type of content they want to receive and the cadence (as opposed to just opting out entirely).

Email can be a strong and hard-working business driver, lead generator and relationship-builder. Pace believes in a holistic email marketing strategy that incorporates a test-and-learn mentality so that you are continuously optimizing your content and distribution. Email without strategy is often ineffective and will not yield maximum ROI.

With strategic email marketing we still reach out and make personal connections with customers in a fast-paced digital world, to add value to our brands as long as we are smart—and strategic— about it. Although the future of content marketing is shifting, email remains a foothold in industry and therefore it should be a key part of your overall targeted content distribution strategy.