This is not easy to set a good email strategy but when you do it properly you might increase your sales.

Here are the steps to set your email marketing strategy

1 Choose your email provider

Of course, your personal email is not able to send out your newsletters or emails to a large email list then you need to choose first a provider specialized in email marketing.

There are several providers in the market, Taximail provides you an easy email marketing software to send out thousands of emails with powerful features. 

2 Build your email list

That seems to be easy to build your email list however you really must think about how to get your subscribers and how to get them to sign up for your newsletter. You can wait after they sign up but it can be a long strategy to acquire new emails. Otherwise, you have others options to get new subscribers:

Social Media: email marketing and social media work well together. You maybe have already fan or followers on your page that even don’t know you send newsletters. Don’t hesitate to create a post to make them sign up. Generally, the page you have created propose a signup button.

Pop-ups: easy to set on your website or blog. that’s important also to explain clearly the advantages of your newsletter.

Events: it’s sounds old school practice, however, that’s a great way to get new subscribers and connect with them by collecting their email addresses.

Checkout: Simple way to get new subscribers, indeed they have expressed already interest in your company by buying your products.

Webinar: This is a good way to reach out to new folks. you can promote your webinar or a partnership with another company.

3 Create a stunning design

The design of your email is one of the key success to reach your subscribers, it has to be at once, clean, modern and fun. You should impact them with stunning content otherwise, you risk to turn them off and lose them. Some email marketing service like Taximail provide you email marketing designer or drag and drop editor that let you create your email template with ease by dragging and dropping text, pictures, button, column etc.

4 Write unequaled content

The readers are always looking for valuable content that can interest them. When they find it they leave to get in their email inbox by activating the opt-out. You should provide great information to your readers then:

You must write a great subject line, this is the most important point to grab the subscriber’s attention. you have to follow a simple rule and stay under 35 characters with words well chosen.

Define the goal of your email: no matter what goal you have chosen for your email, it has to be clear to your reader by creating a CTA for example.

When you write your content, be concise and be short by getting right to the point. Write short sentences and bullets points because people don’t take the time to read long paragraphs.

Add a social button to your email to encourage your subscribers to share your email with their contacts. It will improve the number of people who will see your content.

5 Use company email

The readers need to identify that the sender is a real person to allow you get in their email inbox. Therefore you should use a company email address. It helps you to get a better open rate for your email marketing campaign and increase the reader’s trust.

6 Pick the right time

You need to analyze what is the right time for your users to read your emails. Indeed, they're used to reading their email at the different time for several reasons such as the working time, their schedule and their life rhythm.

You can split your sent between the morning and the afternoon to determine which moment is more effective for your audience. if the afternoon works better, send one part of your future email marketing campaign at 2 pm, 4 pm, and 6 pm. It should help you to see when you readers are more reactive to your emails.

7 Segment your audience

Creating a segmentation can help you to find out who are your readers and can be really effective. There are a lot of reasons why people subscribe to your email list such as get promotions, blog updates, events.

Each subscriber who are following one of this three reasons that's why is really important to implement a segmentation to send them the email they want to receive from you.

You can use basics segmentation criteria: demographic, location, gender, age etc. behavior segmentation criteria such as when they buy your product, how often, which product range, and segment according to their interest as well.

8 Test everything before sending

One of the best things in email marketing is that you can test every part before sending your email campaign It lets you ensure you are sending your best emails. 

Marketer mostly tests the subject line first, however, each element has an importance in email marketing. In addition to this element you can consider testing also this element:

• Sender From name
• The frequency with the time of day and/or day of the week
• Images VS texts
• Number of links
• Unsubscribe at the top or at the bottom 
• First name personalization in the subject line or in the body 
• Animated Gifs
• Font styles and colors
• Social media icons
• Delivery time 
• Call to action

Here are some guideline about how to run a test

• Stay simple. Start with subject lines and headers first.
• Focus on one element to determine properly what is driving success.
• Record your results to learn from them
• Set a routine testing while creating email marketing campaigns
• Run your test on small groups but large enough to get clearly the winner. 
• Learn from your tests and optimize your email marketing campaigns according to them!