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I have often said that marketers cannot be effective if they are looking at each tactic in a isolated tunnel.  In my opinion, all marketing efforts should be woven together to ensure the greatest return and results across the various marketing mediums.  It was refreshing to hear this from one of our clients this morning.  We were discussing their email marketing program and trying to learn what impact it has made to their overall marketing efforts.  I loved the client's response to us:

Email marketing is part of every strategy we employ.  In fact, we include it in every marketing plan because we know that it can help us drive the results we are after.  Especially in those efforts where we know we have to extend our reach.

In this specific example, email marketing often helps extend the client's grassroots marketing efforts.  They gave us multiple examples where they did not have extensive marketing budgets for an event, but after employing email marketing into those campaigns, they were able to not only increase attendance, but generate enough response to consider the event a success.  Why, you might ask?

Well, I believe it is simply because they gave email marketing a seat at the strategy table.  They purposely and intentionally looked for ways to intersect their email marketing efforts with their outreach strategy.  I often make this suggestion and typically the next question that follows is, How? Here are a few steps that I would recommend:

1. Make email marketing an important part of your marketing efforts: Ensure that at every point of interaction, your audience has the ability to opt-in to your mailings.  Better yet, give them the option to further detail their preferences and you will be able to segment your mailings to increase effectiveness. Remember, it's not about the quantity, but the quality!
2. Build a Calendar: Whether you are mailing quarterly, monthly, daily or even ad hoc as events occur, building those emails into your overall marketing calendar will ensure that they are a constant part of strategy.
3. Plan out each email: This may sound like common sense, but I have found it helpful to define a few things in your plan to be most effective.  1)  Who are you trying to reach?  2) What message/theme do you want to convey?  3)  How will you measure success?  Believe it or not, I still to this day use this strategy to plan my emails.  I have found that I am more consistent with my messaging and am able to stay on point much more effectively.  In fact, I often sketch out my content first to see what works best.  We recently outlined how to find inspiration in design.
4. Monitor your results: In the rush to get an email out, I'm sure we are all guilty of checking it off the list and moving on to the next tactic.  However, don't forget to circle back and monitor your results.  This can be helpful in measuring success, improving future campaigns, and even in re-marketing efforts with follow-up communications.

These are just a few tips that I recommend to clients, but also use myself.  Be sure to subscribe to our blog via email and continue to receive additional tips and tricks to make your email successful.  Need help with your email strategy?  Contact me at marketing@delivra.com or at 866-915-9465.

Carissa Newton | Marketing