Setting a goal is a key step towards success in any endeavor, including email campaigns. Email marketing goals are a powerful tool that can streamline your business operations and maximize your chances of success.
Sending emails is easily the most tried-and-tested format of digital contact-based marketing. However, it’s easy to worry about complex details — like email types, content writing, scheduling, and sourcing email lists. Whether you send B2B emails or loyalty program newsletters to customers, having objectives helps. It just helps hone your overall clarity.
In this guide, we’ll show you how you can weave in goal-setting to ensure more effective email marketing campaigns. Get ready for definitions galore to solidify your true understanding of this strategy. But we’ve also got benefits, examples, and practical steps coming up as well. You’ll be an expert in no time; there’s a good goal for you!
What Is Email Marketing?
An email marketing strategy is a process of contacting people with marketing information. It typically requires sending emails through software like Gmail or Outlook, with you either writing content yourself or outsourcing. Many businesses pair those standard email platforms with other marketing tools, utilizing extra features like bulk sending or recipient analysis.
In summary, though, the main objective of email marketing is to reach out to past and potential customers continuously. The strategy aims to connect, retain, and drive engagement. There are many ways to meet these “blanket” goals, including using various email types. You could use:
- Email newsletters to connect and drive customer loyalty through chatty, personable updates
- Promotional emails to raise awareness of sales and drive purchases and, therefore, profit
- Transactional emails build faith in customer relationships by reassuring them of your legitimacy and the fact that you’ve received their orders.
- Feedback requests limit negative online reviews and encourage two-way conversation, allowing you to improve customer experience.
- Abandoned cart emails to increase your conversion rate and reduce lost profit
- Welcome emails to get off on the right foot and build instant rapport
- Customized birthday emails to enhance your relationship with customers
- Event invitations to invest in event marketing and foster lucrative connections
As you can see, there are so many forms of email marketing that businesses can use. It really depends on how creative and thorough you want to be.
Nobody wants an inbox overflowing with emails, either. Aside from functional types (you should automate transactional and welcome emails to run like clockwork), keep correspondence quality over quantity.
Pay particular attention to subject lines, too. 35% of recipients decide whether or not to open mail based on this snippet alone.
How To Define Email Marketing Goals: 4 Steps To Take
When setting email marketing goals and objectives, it can be challenging to pinpoint the exact things you want to achieve. It’s not as simple as saying, “Well, I want my loyalty program to be irresistible.”
Instead, you must break it down into tangible steps. You need to know how to define email marketing goals.
1. Brainstorm Your Ideal Scenario
Brainstorming is vital, as you want the sky to be your limit. And if you want uncapped potential, you need to get creative.
Let ideas flow. Do you want a loyalty program that drives more purchases? Or promotional emails that encourage people to sign up for presale access? Write everything down without judgment for at least 15 minutes or so.
2. Break It Down Into Actionable Steps
If the first stage is a dream world, the magic happens in the second step. Get practical now, breaking one or two of your “ideal scenarios” into actionable steps.
For instance, what percentage of sales or exact number do you want for a loyalty program that drives purchases? If that’s, say, 20% of overall sales coming from your program, you might need two promotional emails a week. And of those two promotional emails, what conversion rate would you require to hit that 20% mark?
Very quickly, you’ll have a framework for exactly what you need to set up to garner the desired results.
3. Give It a Time-Frame
Without a time frame, most people find their motivation sucks. Keep it realistic (nobody thrives on total delusion), but keep a slight pressure on yourself.
Within that time frame, set out what tasks you’ll do when so that you can stay on track.
4. Analyze Your Results
There’s no point in doing all of this work and then letting your results float off into a void. You need to keep track of your email marketing KPIs. Statistics like your click-through rate, open rate, and overall percentages of email engagement really help.
By knowing these, you can make the specific changes necessary for better results and stay on track.
Speaking of being specific, have you heard of SMART goals? If not, hold fire for our next section. This acronym can help you define those objectives even more effectively.
What Are Email Marketing SMART Goals?
Email marketing SMART goals are a way to meet your targets better. They are all about creating clearer-cut objectives that are easier to uphold and measure. The acronym is a popular tool across all industries and strategies, including email marketing efforts.
Here’s what it stands for:
- S: Specific
- M: Measurable
- A: Attainable
- R: Relevant
- T: Time-bound
Using SMART means that you don’t say, “I want to grow my email list.” Instead, you say, “I want to grow my email list by between 50 subscribers by January 1st using WiFi marketing.”
Do you see how this is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound? Choosing to grow an email list is highly relevant to an email marketing strategy. It’s measurable because you can count them and attainable since you already have a method — in this case, WiFi marketing. It’s also specific, as you’ve given an exact number of subscribers you’d like to increase.
Using SMART to shape the phrasing and ideation of your objectives helps keep them realistic and achievable. In a team, it ensures everyone is on the same page and aids communication. And, even individually, it boosts the likelihood that you’ll follow it through to the very end (and hopefully succeed).
3 Psychological Benefits of Goal Setting
Even as a small business wanting to see benefits from email marketing, you’ll notice a positive shift through goal setting. There are colossal psychological benefits from simply setting objectives. It strengthens your entire approach to your strategy and streamlines your campaign.
One of the biggest mistakes is failing to set email marketing campaign goals. Don’t make it. Here are the three psychological reasons why you should set some ASAP.
1. It Boosts Motivation
Having a goal creates a sense of urgency and helps direct your effort. Nobody has 100% motivation all the time, but clear objectives make it easier to show up reliably. Already road-mapping your efforts means you have to do less work on those trickier days.
It also keeps you inspired, as you have a bigger picture in mind. Having that sense of aspiration is incredibly helpful when sticking to your plans.
By boosting motivation through objectives, we increase the likelihood of what we desire actually happening. It’s one of the main psychological benefits of setting goals.
2. Tracking Process Provides Positive Reinforcement
A huge benefit is that tracking progress provides positive reinforcement. It encourages you in a way that an email marketing platform alone could never, and that’s valuable. You are getting constant feedback about improvements, which is validating! Everybody loves measuring steps towards a huge goal.
Psychologically, we learn best using this positive type of reinforcement. It helps us to feel confident and take risks to get out of our comfort zones. It also nurtures positive thinking, leading to a healthier mindset overall.
3. It Keeps You in Reality
The flip side is that goal setting keeps you firmly rooted in reality. If you go off the radar, you’re aware of those unmet goals. Having those objectives means you are accountable if you don’t show up. You clearly see the result of your lack of effort and action.
Of course, it can be helpful as feedback if you find yourself in this situation. It likely means that your steps weren’t actionable enough, and your “whys” weren’t that compelling. Break down your steps to achieve your goal and map precisely how and when you’ll complete each.
Additionally, jot down why you care about these objectives in the first place. For instance, will more email subscribers boost profit? Why would your business benefit from that increase in earnings — what would you allocate those funds to?
3 Examples of Goals for Email Marketing
We promised you we’d get practical, so here goes. One of the best ways to learn about setting goals is to look at other people. Knowing what you could be aiming to improve is helpful, especially if you’re still in the early stages.
So, let’s cover some of the best examples of email marketing. Here are three; feel free to pinch or adapt them.
1. Increase Email Subscribers
This is a big one. The more subscribers you have, the higher your chances of scoring better engagement. You should always aim to build a community, focusing on rapport and scale.
Depending on your timelines and methods, there are a few ways to incorporate increasing subscribers into a goal. This is how you can develop and finetune this specific objective:
- Increase your subscribers by * amount in * amount of time.
- Increase your subscribers by * in * amount of time by using * method.
- Increase your subscribers by * in * amount of time by using * method to achieve *.
For example:
My goal is to increase my subscribers by 150 recipients in two months using WiFi marketing, driving profits by 5%.
2. Increase Your Email Engagement
Another popular goal is to increase email engagement. An important distinction is the type of engagement you want to focus on. Is it open rates? Conversion rate? You choose.
Then, shape your engagement goal using the process below, simply adding in your details.
- Increase my * by * amount in * amount of time.
- Increase my * by * in * amount of time by using * method.
- Increase my * by * in * amount of time by using * method to achieve *.
For example:
I will increase my open rate by 20% in a month by optimizing subject lines to achieve better visibility.
3. Send More Emails
Another hugely important goal is actually sending marketing content out. The last thing any strategy needs is inconsistent scheduling and, even worse, a total lack of emails sent.
Luckily, this is an easy fix; you could even use email automation software to make a start quicker. And here’s how to develop the phrasing of your objective:
- Increase emails sent by * amount in * amount of time.
- Increase emails sent by * in * amount of time by using * method.
- Increase emails sent by * in * amount of time by using * method to achieve *.
For instance:
I will increase the number of emails sent by two weekly over the next month. To do this, I will use AI-assisted templates to increase customer engagement.
How To Collect Email Addresses To Meet Your Goals
It’s essential to keep this guide accessible for beginner email marketers, so before we finish, what about collecting email addresses? It’s all fantastic talking about sending more emails, but how on Earth do you get the addresses?
You can invite people to join loyalty programs or run giveaways to encourage sign-ups. It’s helpful to add subscription options for things like product restock notifications or even presale access opportunities. You can collect email addresses by running ticketed events and requesting contact details to forward confirmations. And yes, order confirmations and optional receipts, in general, are a good, sneaky way to snag an address or two.
However, the most effective method is WiFi marketing, which involves using captive portals to temporarily barricade guest access to your network.
Instead, the guest clicking to join your WiFi triggers a webpage pop-up. This webpage contains a form of your design, which guests must input requested details into to proceed successfully. And, you guessed it, you can request email addresses. The guest gets internet access, and you get another email address for your list.
Everyone wants WiFi, so it’s a surefire way to gain recipients. If you run an in-person business, we recommend utilizing captive portal WiFi. It’s a great addition to your email marketing strategy.
Beambox: Choosing Strong WiFi Strategies
If you’re going to succeed with your email goals, you’ve got to have a strong WiFi strategy behind you. As we’ve established, it’s an effective way to boost your email list. Having extra control over who joins your internet and the cost to them is a handy trick up your sleeve.
To form a strong WiFi marketing strategy, you need an in-person location and a pre-existing WiFi network. Your next steps are to find software that provides a captive portal system, preferably including customizing details and analysis. In an ideal world, request a demo or subscribe to a free trial system; this allows you to “dip your toe in.” Then, enable captive portals in your router settings and make a start!
It’s shocking how quickly contacts can build up using this method, especially if you experience a lot of foot traffic. Just remember to automate the organization of all the email addresses; otherwise, you’ll end up swamped. Most software syncs these details into a huge database you can access anytime.
Here at Beambox, we can help. We run an all-in-one WiFi software that includes a customizable captive portal system. This means you can adjust the portal to collect all the email addresses you may need.
Start your Beambox free trial today and meet your email marketing goals head-on with a wealth of contacts!
