1. Take permission: Like we’ve already discussed, email inbox is a place of reprieve from the continuous din of social media. It is where a person gets “important” actionable messages. Hence, it is important for any business which wishes to communicate with prospective customers to take permission to send messages to an individual or another business. This means, there is a need to build an email list where people have specifically agreed to receive your content.This must be done in the following steps:

a. Have a clear call to action: Get people to sign up for your content, offers and promotions through very clear and concise copy. Your prospective clients must know what exactly they are signing up for and must not at any stage mark you as spam.

b. Get whitelisted: Once you have received the email address, make sure the client whitelists you. This is important so as to prevent your email from going to the spam-box by default. This requires a small email reminder in the first email you send to the client and additionally in each follow-up email that you send.

2. Stay true to your word: It is important for your email marketing campaigns to be consistent with their initial promise.  Not only must the content be compelling and relevant but the messages must be delivered at the promised frequency. If the campaign message said that weekly messages will be sent then the client’s inbox must not be bombarded with emails every day. Similarly, if daily updates are promised and not delivered, it still leaves the client feeling cheated.

a. Pitch with caution: You have permission to send messages to the client’s inbox, do not misuse it. Send offers that are relevant to the client. Take the example of Amazon which tracks buyer behavior and pitches relevant offers and adds value through discounts or promotions. Random pitching though may be a surefire way of being dumped into the spambox or being blocked.

b. Newsletters: A newsletter is a great way to provide refreshing content to your client as well as updates about your business and its latest activities. Clients feel good as well as connected with your business. Newsletters are a great way to promote your CSR activities and generate goodwill for your business.

c. Autoresponders: These are a great help if you wish to schedule your emails in advance. In fact, you must schedule them in advance. This will ensure that you are consistently sending the desired material to your audience without fail and are never out of touch. This way when you have an offer, your audience will take notice.

3. Analytics: Perhaps the most important step but it comes after the above two steps. Investing in an analytics tool and analysing your campaign results is an important step to improving your current as well as future campaigns. Using an analytics tool helps you capture small details such as the peak time when emails are opened, the open rate, the CTR and the number of unsubscribes. Open rate tells you whether you’ve built goodwill with your clients, CTR tells you how impactful and relevant your copy is and unsubscribe rate tells you whether you need to do more work on your campaign.
These above steps are important to get you started on your email marketing journey, an important part of today’s digital marketing mix.

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