Honestly, it doesn't take buckets of money or a degree in marketing (though it does help!) to launch an amazing and successful email marketing campaign.
All it takes is tenacity and these 6 easy steps.
1. Research
Before you embark on anything that's potentially massive or costly, like purchasing a car, you always do some research to see what's out there and what's available to you.
See what other companies in your industry and market are doing. Look at what startups, small, medium and major companies are doing or not doing with email promotions.
2. Plan
Just like practice makes perfect, so does planning. Though you can never anticipate everything, planning does provide you with a roadmap of actionable goals, achievements and markers of success.
Further, it gives your team an idea of what's coming up and what they need to do in order to get ready for it.
Planning also helps you coordinate your strategies across all of your marketing channels so that your message remains consistent.
3. Get buy-in
So, here you are with mounds of relevant research and a shining email marketing plan in hand, but before you start giving out assignments and creating your first email, you need to get company buy-in.
For most companies, marketing takes up a considerable amount of time, energy, focus, and money. If you're going to embark on an email marketing journey, you need to make sure that all the powers that be approve of and make changes to your plan.
Without buy-in, you're going to be in a very lonely place.
4. Divide and conquer
Regardless of whether it's just you or if you have access to scads of people to do your email marketing bidding, you need to divide up the responsibilities. With a clear delineation of roles and tasks, your first email marketing campaign will go off without a hitch (no promises).
Once everyone is assigned their respective duty, then you can get a-crackin' at designing your first bunch of emails.
5. Promote
Whether you start promoting before you divide and conquer after (as recommended), it needs to be done. Without subscribers, you'll have no one to send to. With no one to send to, you'll not sell anything. Without any sales, you'll have just wasted your time.
Start promoting your brand new email campaign on your company website and generate some buzz on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Make sure that you've set up a quick and easy form for new subscribers to fill out, and set up a welcoming autoresponder that, well, welcomes new subscribers but also serves as a secondary confirmation of their subscription.
Get the word out across all of your existing marketing channels. Ask your staff to promote your new email campaign in their email signatures.
6. Send
Easy enough, right? But, we have to say, this possibly is the most nerve-racking part of the whole process. Just breathe, wait, and watch.
