How to Create an Effective Email Marketing Plan

Email marketing is an integral part of your online marketing plan, which allows you to leverage the accessibility of email to deliver important memos, inspiration, updates, offers, special promotions, educational material, messages, entertainment, and more to recipients who have opted into receiving such communications.

Are you developing a robust, growing contact database? Are you staying connected with the contacts you already have? If you aren’t certain where your retreat center stands on these two important marketing questions, you may need some assistance with email marketing.

Email marketing doesn’t get a lot of attention these days, and some have gone so far as to even say that “email is dead.” This may be due to the fact that folks have acquired a sour taste for email spam; statistics show, and savvy Internet marketers know, however, that email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to nurture leads and retain the customers that you already have.

If done correctly, your email recipients will welcome your messages and you’ll find that email marketing is a productive addition to your overall marketing plan; I promise.

To help get you on the road to a successful email marketing strategy, I’ve put together a 10 step plan that’s easy to follow.

10 Steps to Successful Email Marketing

When asked which email marketing provider a client should use, I typically prefer to start with an evaluation of their situation. Do they already have a huge contact database? What about a sales team? How are their leads currently gathered, and how are they nurtured?

Larger businesses with big sales teams, and those selling digital information products, may want to consider something more robust like Salesforce or Infusionsoft, which come with automated marketing tools and enable businesses to set up multifaceted lead nurture and sales funnels.

For retreat centers and teachers, I recommend an affordable, simple tool like Aweber. I like Aweber because it provides a good, easy platform for email marketing, without the complexities, or learning curve, of a comprehensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool.

Here’s all you need:

• Easy social media and website integration
• Contact forms for auto responders
• Drip campaigns
• Email blasts
• Reporting

If you’re the proud owner of a substantial database, congratulations! That means you’re way ahead of the game. Don’t make the mistake of disregarding these valuable contacts. Take some time to clean up the database by updating existing information with a tool such as Data Connect or StrikeIron.

Segmentation is one of the most often overlooked aspects of organizing an email marketing list. Good segmentation will help you increase your click through rates (CTRs) and response. You can segment your list by lead source, location, gender, past retreat attendees, interest, or any other segment you feel is relevant.  You’ll send specific messages to each segment of your list, thus increasing the efficacy of your campaigns.

There are a number of ways to get folks to opt in to your email list. Here are a few creative ways to avoid spamming, and email the people who actually want to hear from you.

• Place a signup form with a call to action (CTA) on each relevant page of your website. I like to use what I call an “ethical bribe” to encourage opt-ins. An e-book or pdf download, access to a webinar or video, or admission to a members only are; the possibilities are endless and easy to implement.
• Do the same for your social media pages
• Add an opt-in form to your inquiry pages

Don’t forget to include an opt-in link to booking confirmations, client surveys, and review requests. A retreat booking software is an excellent tool for collecting emails from your audience.

Use a check-in application for retreat attendees that includes an opt-in for communications. I really like Birdeye; it’s actually a review tool, but you can customize your review requests so you easily can use it to “feed two birds with one scone.”

Create a purposeful campaign
Target each message so that you can create design and copy that will speak directly to each list segment in your database.

To inspire you, here are some common campaign objectives that you may consider:

• Qualify a lead beyond the information initially submitted
• Promote a specific retreat
• Generate repeat business from existing customers
• Drive traffic to a new page or article on your website

• An 80/20 ratio of text to imagery is recommended
• Use a few images, but don’t go overboard
• Include a call to action, but present it as both a text links and a simple graphic
• Use design elements to get recipients to focus on the most important parts of the copy
  

Here is an example of a layout template that I’ve found to be effective for all kinds of email messages. Note how the headlines, copy and calls to action offset aesthetic elements like images.

• Stay away from spammy triggers such as “guarantee”, “free”, “call now”, “urgent” and “order now”
• Keep it short and sweet at under 70 characters
• Make it notable, amusing, intriguing, and/ or actionable
• Write at least 10 subject lines for each email, then narrow it down until you get a perfect open trigger

• Deliverability (Did your emails get through?)
• Open rate (Were they opened?)
• Click through rate (Did your recipients click on the links?)
• Conversion rate (Did you get a lead or sale?)

• Subject lines
• Style, tone and context of copy
• Font sizes, colors and formatting
• CTAs