How to build an email strategy for your website?

Many people think that emails don’t work, so you shouldn’t invest time and energy in them. However, I think that email marketing is the most efficient way to communicate with your audience and to sell products. In this article, I’ll try to explain how to build an effective email strategy. So, let’s go!

Marketing uses three types of emails: transactional emails, emails in follow-up sequences and broadcasts (newsletters).

Transactional emails (triggered emails) — any email that is triggered by a user’s interaction with a website/app. For example, when you register on the site — you receive an email with your registration information; when you buy a product — you receive an email with purchase confirmation. You can set up as many triggers as you want; however, be careful not to overwhelm your clients with such emails.

Emails in sequences — it is a list of emails that follow each other in an arranged order. When you create such a list, you should know the segments of the audience that will be interacting with your emails. If it’s hard to determine all segments; you can always divide your subscribers into groups: (leads) prospects, clients, lost clients.

Follow up sequence for prospects

The primary goal of a follow up sequence is to convert leads into clients. They have several variations that depend on what product is sold.

The first option is common for online courses and products.

The primary tactic of such a sequence is you send several educational emails or emails that provide extra value for your leads. It helps to form loyalty and increases trust in your products. When people begin to be confident that you are a great specialist, you start to send them sales letters.

For instance, when a person registers in order to get a free white paper, he begins to receive the following list of emails:

• “Thank you” email with a link to the white paper
• Email with the most interesting materials on your blog
• Email with a link that provides free access to your educational video
• Email that has a checklist or “how-to..” list
• Other educational or informational emails
• Sales email that describes how your product (e-zine, course, tutorial, etc.) can solve a person’s problem. Add a limited time offer or a Special deal in order to increase the conversion rate.
• Sales email with a proposal, discount, etc..

It is evident that in spite of the fact that such a sequence has an educational component, the main goal is selling your product.

The second option is more popular among e-commerce products.

This sequence starts to sell a product immediately. As an example, you can see the list of such emails below:

• “Thank you letter” for subscribing and representing the account manager who can help to answer all questions about a product (a Call-To-Action button is “Contact the manager”)
• Email that describes the benefits of using the product with a CTA to buy it
• Email with testimonials about your products with a CTA — read more on our website or buy it now
• Email with case studies and recommendations about how a person can use this product
• Email with an exclusive offer to purchase the product with a discount
• Other Sales emails

As I mentioned before, the sequence for prospects must convert leads into clients and nothing else.

When a person buys your product, he becomes a client and starts to receive a sequence for the clients. This sequence has several goals:

• Stimulate the customer to buy more products from your company (up-sales);
• Encourage the customer to use this product more often or longer (the main aim is to increase the lifetime value of each customer);
• Encourage the client to share information about the product among his friends and provide positive public feedback about the product;

For these reasons, the letters in such sequences can be very versatile, for example:

• Email with a proposition to leave feedback about a product and get a discount on the next purchase ( a CTA button: “Leave your feedback”)
• Email with a review of stuff that people often buy with the main product (a CTA button: “Buy them now”)
• Email with the description of the VIP program or the Loyalty program that exists in your company (a CTA button: “Join Now”)
• Email that promote your referral or affiliate program
• Other emails…

The length of such a sequence depends on how many products and services you have. Please, remember that any email must consist of at least one primary topic and CTA. The average number of emails in such a sequence is 10–15.

The next sequence is for people who have stopped using your product or service.

It must stimulate feedback about why they left your service or show them good reasons to become your client again.

Clearly, if your product has problems, a dissatisfied customer is unlikely to return. So the first letter should have a topic like: “Provide feedback and Get something Valuable” (In some cases it is only one email that we should send). Use this information as a cornerstone when you create a “Lost client sequence.” Emails in this list must help to overcome the customers’ disappointment in your product and provide important reasons to return tousing your services.

Examples of emails in the sequence:

• Email: “Give us your feedback and get free use of something.”
• Email that describes how we can help solve any issues with your account. Just write to us.
• Email: Don’t like to manage your account? Spend $100 more and become our VIP client, we will manage your account instead of you.
• Email that provides a 30% discount to clients who stopped using your service. Limited Time Offer.
• Email that proposes a PRO account at the price of a Basic account.
• Other emails that will stimulate a client to come back.

I only described three common segments, though you can have as many segments as you want and each of them has the customized sequence of emails.

Several tips:

• Don’t spam your audience — create a tracker that counts how many emails each client receives from you (not more than one email per day).
• Be sure that emails are interesting and engaging
• 1–3 rule: One email — one topic — one primary CTA
• Test all your emails. Use services that have testing features, you can find some of these services here.

Broadcasts (Newsletters) are regular emails to your audience (often weekly). Usually, a company sends news, special offers, links to interesting materials, etc. A newsletter is the most effective way to maintain regular communication with your clients. Also, emails with special offers are a popular method to increase your sales in a short period.

Examples of emails’ subjects for your broadcast:

• You will be stunned! Check out Women’s New Arrivals
• Digest: 10 most read articles in our blog
• X-mas offer! 50% Discount! Hurry up!
• Write a review about us and get a $50 Bonus in your account
• We released a new version of our product. Now you can do more!

Hence, your main goal is to combine the different email types in order to achieve these goals:

• Increase the conversion rate;
• Increase the lifetime value of each client (average check, time of service usage, return from “lost” to “active clients”);
• Get valuable feedback from your existing audience

Priority in the email creation process

Firstly, you should think about your business and what goals you want to pursue. For example, when you launch an e-commerce website you must create basic transactional emails, such as a Registration Confirmation Letter or an Order Confirmation Letter. However, for many entertainment sites this rule is not so crucial and they only really need newsletters.

Secondly, you must figure out what limitations your existing email software provider has. Unfortunately, many of them can’t provide the full range of features that are important in the email creation process or buying these features will cost you an arm and a leg. For instance, one provider proposes “send newsletter” functionality only, another gives you the possibility to create good sequences, but you can’t manage subscription lists, etc.

Priority in email creation process:

• Transactional emails (Welcome emails, Order Confirmation emails, emails with Purchase Details, etc.)
• Triggered emails ( Types:

1) Abandoned Cart — You can find good ideas for writing these emails here or here

2) A person viewed specific products

3) Buyer can’t complete purchase because of errors in the payment process, etc.)

• Follow up sequences
• Newsletters (Special Offers, News, How-to instructions, etc.)

The main KPI for tracking the effectiveness of all email activities:

As we mentioned before, the business goals form your KPI. So, the most important indicator is how many sales (income) your emails generated. Other popular indicators are:

Delivery rate — shows how many emails were delivered to your subscribers. It indicates the quality of your email list, and how many email addresses exist and were not banned.

Spam Rate — shows how many subscribers complained about your email. A high spam rate means that your emails aren’t relevant to your audience. Also, it means that your account or domain might be banned by the email service provider soon.

Open Rate — specifies how many subscribers opened your email. By this indicator, you can figure out the attractiveness of your email’s subject

Click-through Rate — indicates how many clicks were made by your subscribers in the email. Often, the click rate is the most important factor that illustrates the attractiveness of your message in the email.

Visits (Site Traffic) — shows how many users visited your site using the links in your email.

If you are eager to know more about email marketing KPIs for your business, you may read this article.

Common types of software that are used to build email campaigns:

You can easily find countless email service providers on the Internet that can perform all your tasks. Many of them have a good reputation on the market. For example, everybody knows Mailchimp or Aweber as reliable services. Also, before you choose an appropriate service, read several reviews about it (Good reviews can be found here and here)

Good solutions:

Sendgrid+Sendwithus — a good solution for people who want to buy a reliable service for a song.

intercom.com is a ready-to-use full stack email service provider and a good solution for people who have no experience in coding.

For more recommendations view these articles:

• HubSpot Free email marketing course
• What is the best email software for drip marketing campaigns?
• How to Send Email Like a Startup
• Minimum Viable User Onboarding — How to create an Email Strategy

In conclusion, one can say that I described only a small part of the overall email strategy. Nevertheless, this part is the most important and helps you to create your own workflow and build a great master plan in your work with subscribers.

Do you have any questions? Ask about them in the comments section below!

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