What Is Your Email Marketing Plan For The New Year?

The end of the year is always a busy time, especially if you’re running an e-commerce shop. In that case, you have to think about your email marketing plan for next year while still executing this year’s plan.

That can get confusing, but it’s also an opportunity to see what part of your email marketing strategy works in real-time. You can take what works from your current plan and apply that to what you want to do next year. 

But, to come up with a strategy, you have to have a plan. Just creating a campaign or two and sending a few emails out willy-nilly isn’t going to cut it anymore if you want to convert customers. 

Consumers today are smart and savvy; they get tons of emails every day and only read a choice few. What you want is to develop a marketing plan for the coming year that will make your emails stand out and get your customers to buy.

Here are a few things to consider as you start planning.

Review your current campaigns

One of the first places to review your marketing plan for the new year is your current email campaigns. Read through them, but do this not through the eyes of you, the marketer. Instead, go through them as if you are the customer. 

Answer some of these questions:

• Does each email have a purpose?
• Are the emails personalized?
• Is the copy compelling, or is the message getting muddled?
• Is there a clear call to action?
• Are there too many or too few emails in this campaign?
• What else can we include to make these emails better?

Sure, it feels like a lot, but it’s essential. All too often, it’s one small error that is a hurdle stopping people from taking action in your emails.

Beef up your post-purchase and loyalty email campaigns

At this point, pretty much everyone has a welcome email campaign; that’s pretty standard. You might also have a newsletter and some dedicated sales campaign. 

A lot of brands miss out on capturing some low hanging fruit in two pretty critical areas: post-purchase and loyalty. 

For post-purchase campaigns, remember that your relationship with your customer does not end after they buy. In fact, you should treat it as the start of a beautiful new relationship. That means you want to keep sending them emails.

Here are a few to consider:

• Real-time, moment-of-open package tracking emails that help reduce where is my order calls.
• An email (and one follow up) asking for your customers to give a review of the product or service they bought.
• An email that asks your customers to rate their experience with you or gives them a chance to share some areas of improvement.

Adding these to your current campaign can help you get a steady stream of reviews, ratings, and testimonials and help identify any problem areas you can fix.

When it comes to loyalty program emails, most customers say they don’t hear from brands enough. Ignoring your best customers is not good business practice, so you want to beef up your campaigns here too. 

Here are a few emails to consider:

• Send VIP or member’s only events that tie into your member’s location, so they get invites or special times to their closest store.
• Real-time updates of loyalty points. Every time a member opens their email, they see the most up to date numbers.
• Tie specific products into reward or points tiers. For example, a member now has enough miles to fly to handpicked destinations with special deals.

Don’t forget to personalize

The number one thing you can do to help make your emails attract attention and reach your customers is personalizing them. It goes beyond, “Hey Name.” You want the content of your emails to target your customer’s interests and needs. 

Here are a few places you can start personalizing your emails:

• Include content blocks with live images that update the moment your customer opens their emails, giving them real-time information.
• Tap into your CRM, email marketing, loyalty program, and shopping cart tools to tie the products and services they browse and buy into product offers and recommendations.
• Use a notification bar, which converts all of your emails from newsletters to shipping updates into something that has personalized information.

Having a plan matters

Email marketing is still one of the very best ways for brands to connect with customers and get a solid return on investment. So, with a great email marketing plan, you have the opportunity to stand out and create emails that give your customers what they want.