Email Marketing

Introduction, Types of Email, Email Marketing Campaign Process, Email Marketing Tools,
Advantages and Disadvantages, Opt-in Email Advertising, Email tracking.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is using e-mail as a means of promoting your products or services. This can be
direct one to one e-mails but typically it relates to sending e-mails to a group of people that have
subscribed to a mailing list.

Email marketing is a digital marketing channel that engages prospects at various stages of the
funnel, engaging and maintaining their interest. Because of its versatile nature, email is a vital
tool for online retailers who want to stay top of mind with consumers. Email marketing is a good
and cheaper alternative to sending direct mail (via the post).

For example some people may subscribe to receive a regular newsletter from you. In general the
term “Email marketing” is used to refer to:
 Sending promotional e-mails in order to acquire new customers or convincing current
customers to purchase something immediately.
 Sending emails specifically designed to enhance relationships with current or previous
customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
 Adding advertisements to others companies’ e-mails (on a partnership basis) to gain
exposure within a new market.

How online businesses use e-mail to engage customers:

Email is utilized throughout the sales funnel and is a key revenue driver for many online
retailers. Common emails include:

 Newsletters: Engage users with information about the industry, company news, and
 Promotions: Often sent to existing customers, promotional emails alert users to new
products and sales.
 Abandoned Cart Notifications: Indecision, nontransparent shipping charges, and
a variety of other reasons cause customers to leave a cart before purchase. These
notifications remind them and can boost conversion by 15% or more.

Measuring the Success of Email Marketing:

The following metrics are used to judge the overall success of email marketing:

 List Growth Rate: This measures how many addresses are being added to the company's
list of contacts. More contacts is not necessarily better - a small list of leads who are
likely to buy is better than a large list that doesn't care.
 Bounce Rate: A 'bounce' is an email that was never successfully delivered. This indicates
a problem such as the account no longer being in use, and businesses need to trim these
addresses on a regular basis.
  Click-Through-Rate: This calculates how many people are clicking one or more links in
the email (typically taking them to a product page or special offer), and is one of the
major signs of interest in an online store.
 Conversion Rate: An extension of the previous metric, the Conversion Rate calculates
how many people are finishing what they've been prompted to do. The most common
criteria for this is purchasing a product or service, but it is possible to use other criteria,
such as filling out a form to provide more information about themselves.
 Revenue Per Message: This metric calculates how much profit, on average, a company
made throughout its campaign. The calculation is a simple division of total revenue by
the number of marketing emails sent.

Checklist for an Effective Marketing Email:

Individual needs for e-commerce businesses vary, but the following elements of marketing
emails have been proven to improve the overall conversion rate.

 One Topic: Emails with multiple marketing messages are seen as "busy." Restricting
them to one topic focuses the reader on the actual message and tends to result in
measurably higher revenue per message.
 Attractive Design: Simple designs that complement the message without distracting
from it are best. Remember that many emails will be opened on mobile devices and many
accounts have disabled images.
 A Clear Call To Action: Readers should never be wondering what to do next, especially
when you want them to purchase something.
 The Result of Experience: Every campaign should teach something new about customer
behavior and what elements (designs, offers, etc.) they are responsive to. Use this
experience to improve the messages on a regular basis.

Types of Email:
1. Promotional Email:
Promotional email is to promote a product or service, usually to entice customers to make
a purchase. Every Business almost would enjoy this benefit. Promotional emails are short
and sweet. You might want to create a special graphic to complement your email copy;
otherwise, it’s not a time consuming process.

2. New inventory email

Its Purpose is to let your customers know about new items. It falls under the promotional
email umbrella. You’re updating customers, but also hoping for a sale. Any business can
tell customers about a new item in stock. Fashion and retail businesses may get the most
bang for their buck. Time is spent taking a good picture of the new product, but these
don’t require a lot of text.

3. Newsletter email

Newsletter email purpose is to inform customers about company news, improve brand
awareness and build a relationship with your core audience. Almost Business would
benefit with this type of email. It takes a bit of time to create a solid newsletter, but it’s a
valuable marketing tool.
 4. Welcome email
Its purpose is to welcome new email subscribers to the family and establish a good
relationship. Creating the email doesn’t take long, but you need to know when a new
customer signs up.

5. Product advice email

The purpose of this mail is to offer your customers advice on how to get the most from
your business or product. At the same time, to establish your authority in the industry.
This kind of email has more information, so your time will go toward writing and
proofreading.
6. Educational email
Educational Email provide customers with industry knowledge that’s connected to your
business or product. It helps build relationships and trust between your business and your
customers. It takes time to brainstorm ideas and to create a sharp email.

7. Reorder email
Reorder Email is To remind customers that it’s time to reorder a certain product.
Any business that sells products or services needed on a regular basis would benefit.
Examples include products like printer cartridges, contacts, pet medications and vitamins.
Basic text and images are needed.

8. Testimonial Email:
Its Purpose is to reinforce how valuable your business or product is through customer
feedback. Every business would benefit with this mail and It takes a bit of time to collect
testimonials. You may need to be persistent to get customers to give them to you.
9. Survey email
Survey Email is to collect helpful information you can use to improve the customer
experience. Any business looking to better itself can use this email.
We have to spend time creating the survey and writing an email with a link to the survey.

Email Marketing Campaign Process:

Planning your Email Marketing Campaign Before you get started actually creating your email
campaign and designing the layout of your email, you first need to think about the purpose of the
campaign and what you are trying to achieve. The types of things we need to include:

 What am I trying to achieve? — This is where you think about the purpose and goals of
your email marketing campaign. You may have a long term goal, whereby you want to
 communicate with your customers on a regular basis to keep them informed of the latest
offers, new services you have added to the hotel, and so on.
 Who do I want to target? — identify who you want to send the email to. Your existing
customers, such as, families or couples who have stayed with you before. You may even
want to split up all your e-mail subscribers to groups and tailor communication based on
the group.
 How will I get people to subscribe to my mailing list? — By law you have to get
specific permission from people to send them a marketing email. This is sometimes
referred to as an “opt-in” and there are many ways you can get people to subscribe (or
opt-in) to your mailing list. For example, you could have a sign-up form on your home
page so that people can subscribe to your newsletter.
 How frequently will I send these emails? — How frequently you send out your emails
will depend on their type and purpose. For example, you may send out special offer and
promotional emails as and when they are available, whereas you may send out a
newsletter once a month. But try and keep the number of promotional communication’s
to a minimum (1-2 a month) as too many emails could potentially annoy and alienate
your subscribers causing them to unsubscribe.
 Calls to action — This is what you want to get the reader to do once they have read your
email. When designing your email you need to lay out exactly what you want the
recipients of your email to do, and design it to make that path clear and easy to follow.
For example, don't distract with too many links or offers, and make not only the call to
action clear but also what recipients can expect when they click through. This can be as
simple as "Click here for a 20% discount on your next weekend trip". For more
information on calls to action, see the section in the guide “Getting the Most from your
Website” which is part of this series of guides.

E-mail Marketing has evolved, moving from simple one-way messages and auto-responders
(now referred to as e-mail 1.0) to a much more sophisticated way of communicating with your
customers referred to as e-mail 2.0. It's an advancement in technology, entrepreneurs now have
the ability to tailor the messages they send based on their customers' interests, preferences and
purchase history - and targeted e-mails yield greater results.

With all the capabilities now available in e-mail marketing systems, there are a few basic things
we need to know about e-mail marketing to build deeper relationships with your customers to
increase revenues, grow your business and get ahead of your competition.

Here are seven steps to creating and launching a successful E-Mail Marketing 2.0 Campaign.

1. Choose the Right E-mail Marketing Software System

CRM systems can range from simple database models to more complex systems that include
sales force management, shopping carts, affiliate programs and e-mail behavior
campaigns. Infusionsoft offers complete CRM capabilities, which include not only database
and campaign management but also offer information on interest, preference and purchase
behaviors so that you can tailor your message and campaigns. Other systems, such as Mail
Chimp , Constant Contact and AWeber offer more basic e-mail database and campaign
management services. Decide what capabilities you want and use a checklist to compare
 systems. Most e-mail programs have training and free support to guide you through the
learning process.

2. Build a List
Even if you only have 10 e-mail addresses, you need to start somewhere. Add those to your
database. Once you have your list started, make sure that you launch a campaign to keep in
touch and in front of your contacts without overwhelming their inbox. I suggest two e-mails
per month maximum. It's not about e-mail quantity; it's about quality.

3. Set up Contact Information Capture Forms

It's easy to add forms to your website or blog to allow visitors to give you their contact
information, such as e-mail address, name and phone number.

4. Decide What You Want to Accomplish

Before you launch your first campaign, you need to decide what it is that you want to
accomplish. Do you want to deepen the quality of relationships, take your list through the
sales cycle, educate them? Why are you sending your e-mails? Set clear goals before you
send your first e-mail, and build your messages and campaign around those goals.

5. Set up Auto-respond E-mails

Set up at least six e-mails that will automatically release on the dates and times you choose to
send out to your list. Keep them short, simple and to the point. Do not make them "sales
pitchy"; use auto-respond e-mails to educate and build relationships, and the rest will follow.
Make sure that each auto-respond e-mail has several links for more information; this is how
you will gauge their interest and determine how to keep marketing to them.

6. Add Triggers to E-mails

Here's an example of a trigger: Your client clicks on a link in one of the e-mails you sent her
about your product or service. As soon as she clicks on that link, it automatically triggers the
release of a message sending her information about a similar product or service based on the
original link. Triggers are used to send clients into a new sales cycle based on topic.

7. Monitor Results
Once per month, look at reporting (metrics) to see which e-mails are more effective and have
a higher rate of opening as well as click-through. Use the lessons learned to build your next
campaign. It's important to know how your list is responding to the e-mails that you send. If
you aren't getting a good click-through response, the problem is either the quality of your
message or the topic. Test a few e-mails with your top customers to see what they respond to
and what they don't respond to (one common test is to send the same message with several
different subject lines to see what your list favors). Offer recipients a discount on services for
their time.

Not only has e-mail technology and software evolved, but the way people use it to communicate
has changed how entrepreneurs and small-business owners market and grow their businesses. E-
mail 2.0 marketing is an effective way to increase relationships, response rates and conversions
through smart, targeted communication.
Advantages of Email Marketing:
Email marketing can be used for many different purposes.

 Promotion — you can use emails to promote a special offer, or a new product or service
to a list of existing or potential customers. The main aim of a promotional email is to get
the reader to take some type of action, such as, book a room, buy a gift card, or reserve a
table. If your readers have specifically subscribed to your mailing list to receive special
offers and promotions then that’s fine, but if they have subscribed to a list to be kept up-
to-date on news and events then if you are constantly bombarding them with promotional
emails you stand the risk of alienating them and forcing them to unsubscribe.

 Retention — these are emails aimed at building a relationship between you and your
readers. These generally take the form of newsletters where you are providing your
readers with information and stories that they may find interesting. A newsletter can of
course also include promotional messages or advertisements but these should not be their
main aim. Your customers can forget about you very quickly so keeping in contact with
them on a regular basis is a good way to keep them aware of you and your business.

 Communication — these types of emails are generally short emails designed to

communicate some important information to your readers. For example, invitation to an
event in your hotel, a traveller tip for your area, details of a news article about your hotel.
Email marketing allows you to reach millions of customers with a click of a button. Like
any marketing medium, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Use it correctly, and
you'll make more money, but use it incorrectly and you could lose your business. Weigh
these pros and cons before you start an email campaign.

 Other Benefits of Using Email marketing - There are many good reasons to use e-mail
marketing because even with the growth of social media, e-mail marketing can still be
very effective
 Cost — Communicating via email has many of the advantages of traditional
direct mail but with much lower costs.
 Speed — if you need to, you can get a message out to your entire list very fast.
 Easy to create — with the many email tools out here, such as, MailChimp and
Constant Contact, it has become extremely easy to send out professional looking
emails and track their performance through reports. Most of these tools provide
standard templates and layouts for all different types of emails, such as
newsletters, invitations, special offers and many more.
 Personalized — the more information you collect, the more messages can be
tailored and personalized.
 Tracking — you can track how well your email campaign is doing, such as, how
many emails were opened, what links did they click, and so on. With this
information you can then adjust your next campaign and improve performance.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing:
Businesses use email marketing as an affordable and often effective advertising tool. However,
before employing this technique we should make yourself aware of the disadvantages and
misconceptions that exist. For example, though many people believe email marketing is free,
starting any marketing campaign from scratch (even an electronic one) will cost your company
money. Several factors can hinder your effectiveness, and, in some cases, email marketing can
even work against your business.
 Spam - People's in-boxes get inundated with email, both solicited and unsolicited. To cut
down on the amount of unwanted emails, many servers have filters in place to lessen the
number of spam emails a person receives. ("Spam" is a common term for bulk distributed
emails.) People can further adjust their email filters to their own tastes. Our email
marketing could well land in a spam folder and never get viewed. In some cases, you
could find yourself or your business in serious legal trouble. The CAN-SPAM Act sets
forth strict guidelines that companies must meet in order to use email marketing.
Violations of the act can cost up to $16,000, and numerous people may be charged. Even
when you take pains to ensure your email marketing conforms to the rules, you may still
be accused and have to prove your campaigns are legitimate.

 Engagement - Email marketing requires constant tweaking to keep your subscribers

engaged. A person will often sign up to receive email solely as part of a promotion. For
example, if a user provides his email address, he may receive a discount on a product. A
user might also unintentionally sign up, such as if subscribing was the default choice on a
web page. In such cases, your email marketing may be perceived as a nuisance. Even in
the case that someone deliberately signed up to receive your marketing emails, like an
industry newsletter, you still must work to maintain a level of engagement to keep your
reader from unsubscribing.

 Appearance - You may have worked to create your email marketing to look exactly the
way you envisioned. Unfortunately, due to the varying servers and computer settings,
your design may not come through the way you hoped, which can diminish the impact of
your message. Text may be moved from one line to the next on a person's screen. The
email setting on another person's computer may only allow text, blocking images from
coming through. If the main focus of your marketing was a logo, it could be lost. If you
want to avoid a misconstrued or possibly messy appearance, you'll need to make sure the
code used translates to the most basic processing systems. This may entail consulting
with a technical specialist or marketing firm.

 Costs - Sending a quick email to someone may not cost you much more than Internet
access, but the costs of launching an email marketing campaign add up. Even basic self-
managed monthly plans with fewer than 10,000 subscribers can cost $70, according to
one marketing software firm. Hiring a company to design and manage an email
marketing campaign includes templates and consultations and can get pricey. A start-up
 package can cost several thousand dollars initially plus a thousand or more per month for
continuing management.

Email Marketing Tools:

Email marketing tools are tools that marketers use to create, send, test, optimize and report on
their email campaigns. An email marketing tool could be a specific tool related to email
marketing like an email subject line generator, or an inbox placement testing tool, or a suite of
tools that enables a marketer to do all their email marketing end-to-end.

1. Sendloop
One of the most important aspects of refining a drip campaign is targeting the right people.
With Sendloop, you can funnel contacts into very specific campaigns and track their movements
on your site to further tailor your messaging in the future.

2. Active Campaign

Active Campaign allows you to create drip emails that are driven by subscriber interaction,
behavior, interests, location, history and more. With this tool, you can automate the entire life
cycle of a subscriber or customer.

Email tracking:
Email marketing allows you to easily track the effectiveness of your campaigns. When you send
out a direct mailing through the post office, for example, you have no way to know how many
recipients opened your mail. An email message, though, shows you how many people received
it, how many opened it and how many clicked through to your links and made a purchase.

Types of Tracking Reports

Depending on the ESP you use, you have a great deal of data and to track and analyze. The kinds
of data your can track include, but are not limited to, the following:
 Email bounce rates
 Who opened emails
 What links were clicked
 Customers that unsubscribe
 Email forwards
Let’s take a closer look at the most commonly used types of tracking reports. As we go through
the types of reports, they will become more and more specific
1. Bounce Rates/Non-Bounce Rates - Bounce rate refers to the amount of emails that were
not received by recipients. It is the equivalent of having a mailed letter sent back to the
sender. This number is expressed as a percentage of total emails sent and requires a
simple calculation. Calculating the bounce rate means taking the number of bounced
emails (which a tracking report will tell you) and dividing that by the total number of
emails you sent to a particular category on your list. You will get a small number (less
 than one) expressed in decimal form. To get the percent number, move the decimal to the
right two places. As an example, if you get 0.25 from your division equation, moving the
decimal over two spots gives you 25%.
Bounces can happen for a number of reasons, like firewalls or a full inbox. Most
of the time, though, it is out of your control and there is little you can do to fix it.
However, you can check for certain things like misspelled email addresses to see if the
problem is in your hands and is fixable.
Non-Bounce rates, on the other hand, are the percentage of emails that did get
sent through, regardless of whether or not the recipient opened them. This is a very useful
number because it is used to let you know detailed information that we will discuss in the
next few sections. Calculating the non-bounce rate is also simple. If you already have the
bounce rate, all you have to do is subtract the percentage number from 100 to get the non-
bounce rate.

2. Open Rates - Open rates are the number of interactions your email server gets as a result
of a recipient opening an email. This number only comes from the non-bounce rate and
not the total number of emails you sent out. Your ESP will know when an email has
opened because of one of the following:
 The images were displayed in an opened email
 A recipient clicked a link in an email
The reason these actions indicate an opened email is because images are stored on the
ESP’s server and accessed from the server when an email is opened. A link within an
email is tracked because clicks are easily trackable. This is another reason why putting
images and links into an email is important for your email marketing strategy.
3. Click-Through Rates - Click-through rates are the percentage of users clicking on links
in an email. This number is taken from the number of opened, non-bounced emails. As
you can already see, these tracking data get more and more specific, building off of one
another. The click-through rate number will be displayed and calculated by your ESPs
software tools. Some ESP software will allow you to view exactly which links were
clicked in addition to the number of times each one was clicked.
Click-through rates are especially beneficial for customizing the interests of your
customers. It extends beyond the email as well, being used on websites to track who
clicks on what links. Since it is easy to track what exactly your customers click on, you
can make well-educated assumptions about what they would prefer for you to send them
in the future. You can also use click-through rates to recommend other types data to the
customer to get them more involved in your company’s other marketing channels.

You can also use click-through rates as a means of testing out different versions of an
email. Separate a list in two and send out a different version of the same email to each
list. Analyze which list has more click-through rates and if necessary, make adjustments
to the emails. Keep testing them out until you feel you have an optimal and effective
email.
 4. Additional Tracking Reports - In addition to the tracking data we have already
mentioned, there are a few other points of data you can view and perhaps even use to
improve the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy. You can see how many
people unsubscribed and keep their data in a category of your email list. It is a good
practice to keep this data because if the customer decides to subscribe to your email list
once more, you do not have to do any additional research on their information.
Remember, though, that you cannot send them any emails unless they grant permission
again.
You can also use tracking reports to see if anyone has forwarded your email to other
email addresses. If your email marketing strategy calls for you to get people to spread the
word about your organization or something it has to say, this is a very useful type of data
to track.

Email Tracking Data – Offline

You might come across an instance where you want to track how well your emails are doing for
certain components of your entire marketing strategy. In some cases, though, using click-through
or open rates will do little to help you track your progress and success. Some situations where
you will want to know if your emails are effective include:
 In-Store Purchases
 Phone Calls
 Event Attendance
Sometimes, an organization wants to know if their emails are enticing people to participate in
actions such as these listed.
Their participation cannot be tracked by software, so being able to track this kind of data
involves some participation on the part of your email recipients. The best way to determine the
effectiveness of your emails is to have your email recipients give you their email address when
the make a purchase at a store or call your organization. For event attendance, you might give
them some kind of special code that gets them into the event and can only be viewed from an
email.
Email Tracking Tools:
1. Contact Monkey:
Contact Monkey provides email tracking and a Salesforce-integrated sidebar in Gmail or
Outlook email clients. The reporting dashboard gives you analytics on how many sends, opens,
reads, and interactions your emails receive. Use the merge feature to send to multiple recipients
based on a pre-built or on-the-fly list. Contact Monkey’s predictive engine provides insight into
how your contacts open their emails by device and time, so you know when to send for the best
response.
2. Tout App:
Tout App combines CRM, phone, and email client integrations into a single platform. You can
build email templates and drip campaigns and log real-time customer interactions with emails so
your team can jump on opportunities. Playbooks help your team choose the best sales-focused
 actions for each customer interaction. In-team messaging and notifications are also available. All
of these features are accessible directly from your connected CRM, so you don’t have to spend a
lot of time updating notes and copy-pasting data from one platform to another. Tout App is built
for the enterprise, with privacy settings and full integrations for most of your technology stack.

Digital Marketing Budgeting

The next thing we're going to talk about, and it's the point of frustration for a lot of digital marketers, is the
budget. Now, the problem with budgets is that you need to plan for how much money you're willing to invest
over a given time.

Therefore, you have to create a budget plan. You need to come up with a plan of how you're going to implement
the budget, how much each function is going to require, because if you have a meticulously planned budget,
providing all the necessary detail, it's very difficult to say no.

Essentially, budgets comprise media costs, creative production, agency fees, and digital tools and technology for
the purpose of delivering on a campaign or strategy. Additionally, staff costs, training and processes can be
included as part of the overall budget though this isn’t always the case.

Media costs
This will usually be the largest budget consideration of any digital marketing plan. In order to budget and
forecast you can use historical performance or estimates from the channels or media platform. You should look at
the overall goal of your strategy and prioritize the budgets towards the channels that deliver on your goals. If
your goal is sales, you will put more budget into PPC than the other channels in your plan, as PPC is a
conversion-driving channel. On the other hand, if your goal is interest or consideration you will put more budget
into display or social media.

As every digital marketing strategy will be different, there is no one size fits all rule for budget allocation and
you should try to balance channel and conversion costs from historical data against your overall goal to distribute
the budget across your different channels. It’s possible to move media budget from one channel to another if you
are seeing good performance when the campaign is live.

Creative production
Production costs will be the second largest expense after media when budgeting for a digital marketing
campaign. Depending on the type of media chosen, you will need to produce specific creative assets. These
include videos, social media images, advertising banners, website image assets, email formats and other creative
outputs to use on your media and website. These fees are for designer, account manager and video production
time so it’s important to remember that certain media choices require creative formats to run or you can’t use
them to their full potential. As a result, it essential to leave enough budget available after media costs to produce
the creative assets to run on your media choices.

Agency fees
If you are using a third party to run and manage your campaign, including, booking and buying media, managing
creative assets, reporting and optimization, you will need to pay for their time - this is usually costed on an hourly
fee. It tends to be lower than media and production costs. While some agencies will charge their fee as a
percentage of media spend, this method rewards spend not performance, irrespective of how good or bad the
campaign performs. The agency gets paid simply for spending the media, there is also little insight into how
many hours are invested in the campaign. As a result, it can be difficult to drive performance when agency fees
are calculated as a percentage of media spend. Most agencies will charge an hourly fee which is a better model
for driving performance.

Digital tools
Sometimes there are digital tools required for the campaign, for example, ad serving tools which are used to
upload, manage, and serve your image creative assets to your audience. These tools and additional analytics tools
will have associated fees. If there are additional tools that are required for the campaign, it’s important to
understand the value and purpose of the tools before committing to a budget to pay for them. Therefore, it’s
essential to understand if they are a crucial part of the success of the campaign or a “nice-to-have” additional
piece to enhance understanding.

Developing a budgeting plan

So, your budget is directly dependent on what factors are influencing these areas.

 People: Questions which can arise include, "Do you need a larger team? Do you need specific skill sets
within your team in order to achieve what you feel is the right way to approach it? Do you need to adopt
a new process of piece of technology to improve your results?”
 Technology: Technology, particularly in larger teams, really helps to improve efficiency. How you
achieve efficiencies is by examining existing and new tools to make sure that the teams are linking in
with each other correctly, that they're sharing data and insight correctly and accurately. So, it's
important to recognize at what point you need to invest in these should you find reasons to address
possible inefficiencies.
 Training: Training must not be overlooked! You should be asking “how much training does your team
require? How much do you need to upscale your team?” It's important to recognize this early because
it's often something that falls by the wayside. If you find inadequacies, then you should try to remedy
this as soon as possible.
 Process: So, what volume and detail are required in your ad buying strategy? If you have a high
investment in media, in advertising, in paid ads, what you're going to find is that it's going to require
more tools and more people to actually manage that advertising. As you start to increase your efforts
into your media buying, content partners or network partners or working with other sites that use
display advertising, what you're going to find is that you're going to need more resources to actually
manage this. Moreover, you will discover, not just the level of manpower and amount of resources
required, but also how much time it will take to monitor and control your digital strategy.

Key considerations
When you're planning your budget, the following considerations are key areas for you to evaluate:

 How many people are in your target audience?

 What are your objectives?

 How many people could you realistically make customers?

 How much money are you willing to invest in digital?

 Have you allocated budget to cover busy months or campaigns?

 Are you allocating enough ad spend?

  Are you under-investing and limiting your impact?

Target audience
How many people, realistically, are within the target audience that you feel you can reach? We all want to be
highly successful and make millions of dollars for the organizations that we work for, but realistically, how do
we ascertain a successful measure of new customers? How many customers do you need to make in order to keep
the lights on? How many customers do you need to make to be really successful?

What follows next is the important question of “How big is your budget?” If you think you will be given a small
budget, I suggest focusing on your target audience through a specific lens. For example, if you told me that your
target audience was 25 to 35-year-olds, and then you told me that you had a small budget, the first question I
would ask you if you think you will be more successful with a male or female audience. For multimarket, it's the
equivalent to saying if you think that you're going to be the most effective with city dwellers, then only target the
capital cities of specific markets to make sure that you're effective.

Setting
You need to understand that budget setting for channels and formats is linked to your objectives. You should
allocate more budget to those channels that will efficiently and effectively deliver on your digital marketing
objectives. It's possible to forecast channel performance by using historical performance as a benchmark for
future campaigns. Using historical conversion rates, you can estimate how much traffic you need at that
conversion rate to deliver a certain number of sales or leads. With paid media, you can estimate the cost of that
traffic by using historical CPCs or CPMs to estimate costs.

Money
How much money do you realistically feel you can invest in digital? It is often the case that when you go through
this process you will realize that you don't have enough money to invest in digital to do absolutely everything
you want to do, and that is okay - nobody ever has enough money that they want to put in digital. I regularly have
to bow to give money to other channels or other media because, strategically, it's the right thing to do.

Under-investing
Are you under-investing in digital and is there a gap that you need to now make up? This is a commonly
occurring challenge for a lot of businesses who might be late to the game. Generally, they find that they haven't
invested in digital and all of a sudden they need a new website, they need social channels, they need to create
content. All of that can be quite daunting, so you need to find a way to make sure that you understand how you
might be able to spread those costs out.

Ad spend allocation
This is important because a lot of brands early on don't invest in media, and similar to the under-investing
example, it can become quite a shock when you realize that you actually have to pay-to-play for a lot of the
media channels that you should be using. Some brands start out with social, and then ignore search or ignore
display for a long time, and then they realize they're missing those elements in their media mix. So, it's important
to anticipate ad spend allocation and if it will be enough.

Budget allocation
 The final point is the budget allocation and prioritization. When you get to the end of this, if you feel you're
under-investing, then you need to make a case for either more investment, or you need to make a case for a better
use of your resources. The problem with under-investing is that you can find that you're not going to do enough
to even try to make digital work. It will not be a success and you will find yourself facing challenges as to it not
working, when actually the reality was, the business didn't invest correctly in the first place, thereby obfuscating
the efficacy of your digital strategy campaign.

Building a budgeting plan

Next, we're going to talk about developing a budgeting plan. Budgeting plans allow you to plan out all
investment month by month, over a specific period of time. Planning long term will secure investment. Without a
plan, money will be moved around, resulting in digital being under-invested in, under-performing and ultimately
being questioned.

Without a plan, what will happen is money that you had will all of a sudden get moved to another department or
another requirement because there was no plan for it. So, just ensure that when you're planning over a number of
months, that you address moments when you think that the investment will need to fluctuate. For example, in
campaigns during seasonal periods, try to anticipate how your budget might need to increase or decrease. An
example of this that is important is Christmas for retailers. Retailers tend to underestimate how much budget is
going to be required during the Christmas period.

So, if you've spent time addressing your budget, you can ensure that the teams are also sticking to the plan,
everybody's following the numbers that are on the sheet. Then begins the reflection stage where you should try to
discern if you under-spent or over-spent in certain areas with a view to making adjustments in the following
period.

What can happen is over-investment in the early periods, and then by the time you get to the end of it, you realize
that you actually don't have the money to achieve something that you wanted to do. Building a plan that tries to
anticipate these possible fluctuations, to give you the room to maneuver, can make all the difference to seeing
good results from your digital strategy campaign.

So, if you know what your budget is for a year, you should plan for a year. If you know what your budget is for a
half year, you should plan for a half year, and so on. Never plan beyond where the budget exceeds because all
you're doing is guess work then.

What Factors Determine the Cost of Email Marketing?

Email marketing campaigns can be very simple or highly complex. On one end of the spectrum, a single
marketing stakeholder can run small campaigns using freely available technology. On the other end,
enterprises use automation and customer relationship management (CRM) tools to deliver large-scale
campaigns.
Ultimately, email marketing spend falls into three buckets: technology, creative and data:
Technology
Any email marketing tool accounts for a large portion of email marketing expenses, however, some business
also use tools such as an email validation API to avoid bounces and ensure a high delivery percentage. It’s
not advisable to send marketing emails from a personal email account. Under the CAN-SPAM Act,
marketers are required to provide an easy way for recipients to opt out of future emails. Personal accounts do
not provide the ability to opt out with a single click.
Fortunately, there are many email marketing platforms available at various price points, with most
offering free trials. Some examples include:
 AWeber: Designed for small businesses, AWeber has a number of useful features that allow marketers to
automate email sequences, qualify leads, create templates, track results and much more.
 Campaign Monitor: Built around drag-and-drop functionality, Campaign Monitor comes with hundreds of
professionally designed templates to choose from. Its robust data integrations make it possible to customize
sequences based on customer information.
 WooCommerce: This e-commerce platform for WordPress features many marketing integrations, including
the ability to connect a MailChimp account to a digital storefront.
Creative
Marketing automation tools make it easier than ever for business leaders to streamline email marketing
campaigns, but no machine can write effective email copy. For that, you still need flesh-and-blood writers
who understand your brand and its appeal to customers.
A lot goes into the creation of captivating email copy. Recipients make snap decisions based on email
subject lines, so the copy has to be written by someone who understands what recipients want to read about.
Creative writers can produce copy that encourages recipients to click into the email and then click through to
your organization’s website.
Businesses that choose to produce copy in-house may save money in the short term but could end up
spending a lot of time writing email variations. Time spent writing and split-testing email copy may be better
spent running the business. For that reason, many leaders choose to work with marketing agencies to help
with copy.

Beyond copy is the powerful medium of video. A few relevant statistics support incorporating video into
your campaigns, whether in-house or outsourced, personalized or mass-produced:
 A 6% bump in open rates occurs if you include the word “video” in your subject line.
 CRT increases by 25% if you include a video.
 Unsubscribe rates drop by 26% if a video is included.
Your creativity is as good as your problem-solving. Producing good content can be a challenge and finding a
great mixed-media approach to your email marketing campaign will take iteration and refinement. Video
paired with the right copy can make your CPM rate soar and even increase your social media presence.
Data
For your email strategy to be effective, you need a strong email list. Considering that 99% of
consumers check their email every day, there’s a good chance the people you want to reach will at least be
open to the idea of reading your messages. However, you need their permission before you can send them
messages.
There are many ways to grow your email list. For example, you can add CTAs to your blog posts to
encourage readers to sign up for your newsletter. Or, you could create gated content like eBooks, which
people can download in exchange for their email addresses.

Using CRM software, you can create a better picture of each customer on your list. The more information
you have, the better you can segment your lists and create the customized email content.
When you need to grow your email list fast, you may want to consider purchasing an email list. This can be
a little confusing for new marketers because you don’t really purchase a list of email addresses – remember,
you need permission to send someone a marketing email. Instead, you pay for access to lists acquired by
other organizations, such as market research firms. The list provider, or broker, will help you send
customized messages and send you reports on open rates, etc.
Be wary about buying cheap lists that claim to contain millions of addresses. They’re likely filled with junk
accounts that no one actually checks. Numbers to keep in mind are that consumer lists cost between $100
and $400 per thousand emails, and business lists cost between $200 and $1,000 per thousand.