It can be tempting to simply sign up for an email marketing tool like Campaign Monitor and start sending your first campaign.

But before jumping in head first, it’s worth taking a minute to think about your goals and what you really want to achieve with email, as that will dictate the type of campaigns you send, who you target, the content you include, and how you measure success.

Email should be an important component of every digital marketing plan because of its effectiveness in driving conversions and building brand loyalty.

Marketing Plan Example—Sample Marketing Plan Template 

The key to establishing the correct goals for your email marketing initiative is to align them with your company’s wider marketing goals & KPIs. Is the goal to drive new signups for your product? New leads for your sales team? More attendees for your event? More donations for your cause?

Email marketing is the single most powerful channel to reach your audience, and it can be used to achieve a number of different objectives, so it’s worth spending some time thinking about what you want to achieve with it before jumping in.

To help you identify what your goals should be, here are some examples of how Campaign Monitor customers use email marketing:

• BuzzFeed – The popular news and entertainment website earns revenue by selling advertisements on their site, so the key objective of their marketing team is to drive more traffic. With that in mind, BuzzFeed sends regular email newsletters containing links to stories on their website with the goal of increasing the number of visits they get each month and increasing the amount of revenue they generate.
• Rip Curl – The global surfing brand generates revenue through the sale of wetsuits, t-shirts, boardshorts and other surfing goods. The goal of their marketing team is to increase sales, so they use email to promote new products they’re launching to try to drive people to their online or physical stores to purchase those products.
• UNICEF – The global charity organization provides humanitarian aid and assistance to mothers and children in developing nations around the world. Success to their digital marketing team is donations, so they use email marketing to reach out to their donor base, educate them on aid projects UNICEF is undertaking, and ask for donations.
• SXSW, Inc. – This lean organization organizes some of the most well-known events in the world, including the SXSW film, music and interactive festivals held every year in Austin, Texas. The goal of their marketing team is to increase ticket sales and attendees at these events, so they use email marketing to keep subscribers up to date as new artists and speakers join the lineup.
• Soho House – This prestigious members-only club is a regular hangout for celebrities and media moguls around the world. The goal of their marketing team is to keep their member base engaged in the club and regularly using the facilities, so they use email marketing to keep their members up-to-date on events and functions they can attend.

As you can see from these examples, planning what you want to achieve with email before you start sending makes it much easier to identify what to send and who to send it to, and helps you create focused, high-performing email campaigns that will achieve your marketing goals.

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