SMART Goals for Ecommerce Email Campaigns — Wired Plus Marketing Hub

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The potential of using email marketing for ecommerce campaigns is huge. We have previously discussed the amazing return on investment you can achieve with ecommerce email campaigns. However, in order to achieve amazing results, you need to know what you want to achieve and have a strategy in place. In this blog post, we outline how you can create SMART goals for ecommerce email success.

Introducing SMART Goals

When setting goals and targets, it is important to have well-defined goals that align with your overall marketing strategy. When goal-setting, it is useful to structure your goal using the SMART target framework. The framework states that goals need to be:

– Specific: To set a well structured goal you need to decide exactly what you want to achieve. Goals need to have a definite intent. Before you begin a campaign, you need to know exactly what it is that you expect to gain from the campaign. You can refine the campaign later if you feel like you need to add further details to your goal.

– Measurable: You should be able to measure the progress you are making towards achieving a goal. This measure should be objective, not subjective. You can amend the amount that you want to achieve if you find that your campaign is more or less effective than you first thought.

– Achievable: The goal that you set for your team should be within their capabilities. Setting goals that are unrealistic increases the chance that your team will become demotivated. Setting smaller goals which can be achieved regularly gives you the opportunity to build on your success. However, your goals still need to be ambitious. If you fail to achieve an ambitious goal but still make progress, you are likely to be in a better position than you were before.

– Relevant: Every goal that you want to achieve should be relevant to your overall purpose. Although a goal may seem achievable, if it is not going to drive your business forwards, there is little point in investing time and money to achieve it. Outline how each smaller goal will contribute to your overall performance.

– Time-Based: Goals need to have a set deadline or time-frame after which they will have been completed.

When should I use SMART Goals?

You can use SMART goals for almost any target that you want your company to achieve. This goal setting structure is particularly useful when you need to break a larger vision into smaller, more achievable chunks.

Once you have established your goal, you need to use the framework to continually monitor progress towards completion. You may want to schedule a weekly progress meeting so that you can discuss any potential obstacles or problems that have been encountered. This also keeps your team engaged as they are involved in the process.

After your goal has been achieved, you can review the framework to see where your future strategy can be improved. You can also identify areas where you worked well and understand the reasons why.

Benefits of SMART Goals For Ecommerce campaigns

When starting an ecommerce email campaign, it is important to know what you want to achieve. According to a study by Harvard University, setting goals increases motivation levels and achievement levels. Although the paper reports on studies which span a vast array of industries, they indicate a trend for goals to improve performance. Ecommerce professionals can use this to their advantage.

When setting goals, keep in mind what you want to achieve overall and build small steps which build towards the larger goal. The same Harvard study suggested that involving learners in the goal setting process improved their performance. This results from your team taking ownership of their own objectives. To boost motivation levels in your business, you should involve your team in their learning and development through goal setting activities.

In summary, SMART goals benefit you by:

• Creating a sense of achievement upon completion
• Allowing you to monitor performance and progress
• Confirming your intent and commitment to achieving a specific objective
• Giving your team a focus
• Increasing motivation
• Reducing wasted time and spend on unachievable or unbenefitial objectives

Smart Goals for Ecommerce: An Example

Now we have discussed what SMART goals are and how they can help your team achieve success, we have outlined an example of how these goals can be used:

Increase email engagement rates by 20 percent in the next year. KPIs include click through rates, social shares, conversion rates and return on investment.

This goal outlines the specific goal to be achieved ‘increase engagement rates’, gives a measure for success ‘by 20%’, is achieveable for an established email marketing department, is relevant to the purpose of an email marketer’s role and gives a time limit ‘in the next year’ for completion of the goal.

Once you have created goals for your email marketing campaigns, it is useful to break the goals down in this way. When each part of the goal is separated, you can clearly see that you have fulfilled each part of the SMART framework.

Monitoring SMART Goals

One of the major beneifts of the SMART target framework is that you can monitor progress towards completion. You can use the measure and time-frame that you have built in to the goal to identify if you are on target for completion.

Once set, you should arrange meetings and times where your team should update you on their progress. This allows your team to communicate any issues that they have encountered. You can then combat issues and obstacles as they happen rather than waiting for the campaign to be completed.

A development plan can be put in place to rectify any issues that you encounter. You can also use progress reports to amend time-frames associated with specific goals.

Summary

Setting well defined targets for your ecommerce campaigns is proven to improve performance. You can use these goals to drive your ecommerce email marketing function to perform at a higher level and achieve better results.

If you have enjoyed reading about creating SMART goals for ecommerce campaigns, why not download your free copy of The Complete Guide to Email Marketing.

Originally published at www.wiredplus.com on February 21, 2018.