If you don’t set clear email marketing objectives, your campaigns will probably disappoint you.
It’s no secret that email marketing builds massive brand awareness, improves conversion rates, and increases ROI. Reaping these benefits is easy, but only if you know your goals through each campaign.
You must have a framework and evergreen marketing strategy to get measurable results quickly. So, let’s dive into the importance of precise goals to optimize your email marketing efforts.
Why Should You Set Email Marketing Goals and Objectives?
Perfect planning plays a huge role in the success of your campaigns. However, marketing plans often fail due to unclear vision and direction. Therefore, goals are essential to email marketing best practices.
They provide a comprehensive outline of the areas you need to tackle. They also tell you where to spend most of your resources to get desirable results.
If you don’t have a framework, you’ll send aimless emails, which probably won’t bring you any responses. Therefore, you must define priorities and activities that align with your target audience, brand voice, and goals. For this, you should always set key performance (KPIs) indicators to track your campaigns.
Moreover, accurate and precise planning protects employees from overworking and keeps their morale high.
Specific objectives also help you see if things go wrong along the way. As a result, you can modify the campaign accordingly. After all, it’s better to adjust one step rather than start from scratch due to a lack of planning.
Another significant benefit of setting objectives of email marketing is accountability. Proper benchmarks help businesses understand where they need to put more effort. In this way, they can evaluate their strategy and optimize their actions.
How To Set SMART Objectives for Email Marketing
Now that you know the importance of setting clear goals and objectives, let’s talk about how to set these goals. The best strategy to plan your marketing journey is setting SMART goals. But what does this mean?
SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Here’s how to set them:
- Specific: When you create a new goal, it is essential that everyone in your team understands it. Be clear about what the goal is and how to achieve it. For example, “We want to increase website visitors with personalized email recommendations and targeted content.”
- Measurable: Metrics are important to make the goals tangible. Define how you will measure your success so you can adjust your planning or celebrate small achievements. To extend the previous example, “We want to increase website visitors by 10% with personalized email recommendations and targeted content.” Adding a number will make the goal measurable.
- Achievable: Rather than making unrealistic goals, you should make small, achievable ones to keep the success graph up. For example, the 10% in the previous example is achievable, while 50% would be unrealistic.
- Relevant: Relevancy is vital for creating SMART goals. You must look at the bigger picture instead of focusing on short-term success. A relevant goal means it fits into your overall email marketing strategy. Increasing website visitors by 10% should also be your small business email marketing goal.
- Time-bound: Add the element of specific time so that you bring accountability to the table. Make sure you give yourself enough time to fulfill the goal. However, don’t let it go on forever. For example, “We want to increase website visitors by 10% with personalized email recommendations and targeted content within three months.”
9 Key Email Marketing Objectives With Effective Tips
Business growth and marketing are extensive subjects. Several aspects need attention to generate successful results, and it’s difficult to summarize them in one section.
However, nine key objectives should be at the top of your list while planning beginner email marketing. All you have to do is focus on these objectives, and you’ll easily beat the competition. As a result, standing out in this saturated market will never be an issue.
So, let’s understand these email marketing objectives and plan accordingly to help achieve desirable outcomes.
1. Spread Awareness About Your Brand
Spreading brand awareness is the most common email marketing goal since it has a broad reach. Here, you introduce your product or service to the audience. The more you inform the audience about your business, the more likely they will purchase from you.
However, markets have become highly saturated. Your competitors are also offering the same product or service. As a result, your target audience is never out of options.
The trick is to create an introduction that stands out and sparks a relationship with your potential customer. Remember, people only choose brands relevant to their needs and belief systems.
So, after adding catchy subject lines, one of the most effective things you can do is include your “why.” This refers to why you started your company and how it can transform the customer experience.
If you need help, you can search the Internet for various brand awareness and introduction templates. However, always use the one that aligns with your brand voice. Moreover, add what potential customers can expect from this subscription.
For businesses offering a service instead of a product, always highlight that your company’s sole purpose is to help people. Share informative articles to add value to your offer.
Furthermore, calls-to-action (CTAs) allow customers to take immediate action, so always create one. You can use “Join us on social media for updates,” “Watch our podcast,” or even just “Learn more.”
2. Nurture Your Leads
Your work doesn’t end once you’ve gained a lead. This is where the real struggle begins. It’s easy for people to like a product or show some interest when they first stumble upon your brand. However, they still need a lot of nurturing and guidance before they become a paying customer.
Fortunately, a goal to nurture leads can help you turn wandering visitors into paying customers. These emails help you gain your customers’ trust so they finally take action.
It’s about being at the top of your customer’s minds through every step of their journey. However, it’s not about pushing customers or trying to oversell. Instead, you simply need to make sure your subscriber feels involved.
You can start by creating a series of emails that tell your customers about your products or services.
Keep the customer journey in mind and send relevant information. This includes personalized recommendations, timely follow-ups, and exclusive offers.
Moreover, appreciating your subscribers for their time and involvement is one of the best lead-nurturing tricks. Remember, personalized thank-you emails also increase engagement.
On that note, remember to keep your customers interested with regular feedback checks and surveys. You can even give them an incentive to share their opinions and use them to improve your business.
3. Increase Your Sales and Revenue
An increase in revenue is the end goal for every business, and email marketing also helps with this. However, you can’t achieve this by sending random emails. When you plan your marketing objectives, you must consider the different elements that can help increase your ROI.
Businesses with this goal usually use an email marketing platform. The rich features help them increase productivity and revenue. You can also gain actionable insights into your subscriber’s behavior to help you save time and increase conversions.
Moreover, you can use built-in email templates and automate your campaigns to increase brand reach. Automation allows more tailored emails that use customer data and encourage them to purchase.
It also helps with other business aspects like optimization and improvement. These tools have analytics and reporting features that let you measure and improve your campaigns. Again, this will lead to increased revenue. However, don’t forget to personalize these templates.
4. Engage Your Customers
Customer engagement involves every conversation from the first sign-up and continues even after customers make a purchase. Engaged customers are more likely to open emails, interact with your content, and make purchases.
Besides, if you have a strong relationship with customers, they’ll buy from you repeatedly. So, an email marketing goal of engaging customers makes total sense.
Customer engagement improves with real-time personalized messages. Marketing tools can help you achieve this. These tools monitor your subscribers’ interests and behaviors and send emails to drive tailored conversations.
You can also increase engagement by organizing webinars and podcasts or sending blog posts. This trick drives participation and keeps your brand at the top of their minds. Lastly, you can track metrics like open rates, subscriptions, and unsubscribes to improve engagement.
5. Build Trust and Increase Customer Loyalty
Aiming to build trust through emails leads to customer loyalty. Customers keep coming back when they know they’re in safe hands. It’s about reassuring them they’re not risking their time and money with your product or service.
So, be supportive and transparent and show them you know what you’re doing. People always trust companies that are at the top of industry charts. Sharing facts and figures about your industry and teaching them about your business goes a long way.
You can also build trust by sharing success stories. Give potential customers tangible results, and they won’t turn away. Moreover, you can share loyalty programs with your email list to reward your customers and keep them happy.
6. Upsell and Cross-Sell Your Products and Services
Upselling and cross-selling open new opportunities for your business and help increase revenue. Both of these goals encourage customers to make high-value purchases. As a result, you make more sales with each transaction instead of waiting for the customer to return.
Upselling means offering a higher-end product or service, while cross-selling refers to offering additional related products or services.
To upsell, send out comparison emails. Explain the difference between your high and low-end products or services. Highlight why the high-end option is better and more cost-effective in the long term.
Conversely, cross-selling campaigns can include personalized recommendations based on your customer’s interests and history. For example, a haircare brand might suggest scalp massager tools for customers who have purchased an oil.
7. Win Back Lost Leads
Having a goal to win back lost leads can increase sales without hunting for new customers. Losing leads for any reason, such as no follow-ups, incomplete information, and poor customer service, results in lost revenue. However, win-back emails can work wonders in rectifying this situation.
You can re-engage your customers by sending emails with discounts and special offers. However, don’t be too pushy or send multiple emails back to back. If your customers aren’t showing up due to an incomplete query, reconnect and ask if they’re still interested. Lost leads can only convert if you reach out promptly.
According to stats, cart abandonment emails drive three times more customers to take action. You can track abandoned carts and personalize emails to promote a purchase.
Another effective way is sending a survey where you can ask why customers left or didn’t proceed. Surveys always help you understand what made the lead uninterested in the first place.
8. Drive Traffic to Your Website
Getting your emails opened and read won’t do you much good unless you redirect subscribers to your website. After all, that’s where all the transactions will take place. So, why not use email to drive traffic to your website?
You can add links to your landing pages, blog posts, product pages, and customer service pages. However, don’t forget to add a CTA to encourage customers to act.
Moreover, make sure that the landing page resonates with your email. This is the best way to boost click-through rates (CTRs).
Additionally, website analytics help track website visits. You can see if your campaign is effective and make changes accordingly.
9. Collect Customer Feedback
Having the perfect strategy doesn’t come around in one day. It’s an ongoing process that requires continuous improvement. This is only possible when you collect customer feedback. Besides, reviews build credibility and encourage more people to try your brand. Again, emails work wonders here.
You can include these feedback forms in the transactional email or newsletter. Both these emails have high open rates. You can also incentivize feedback surveys to make them more attractive. Many brands are using this strategy to stand out.
Moreover, encourage customers to make an unboxing video for a chance to feature on your social media pages. Share how the feedback will help your business grow, making customers feel like they’re doing something good.
You can also send product care tips, recommendations, and what-to-buy-next lists in feedback and review emails.
Set Clear Goals To Create an Effective Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing is a cost-effective process that helps in customer relationships if you set clear goals. Having straightforward email marketing objectives allows you to improve your campaign and increase your chances of success. So, plan ahead to save resources and add value to the campaign.
If you need some assistance with your email marketing, try Beambox. Our tool helps you collect contacts through a custom captive portal. Then, you can run email campaigns and reach your goals. Start your trial today!
Frequently Asked Questions About Email Marketing Goals
Let’s answer some of the most common questions about email marketing goals and how to achieve them.
What is the main goal of email marketing?
The main goal of email marketing is to expand a business and generate revenue. It helps brands reach potential customers.
It’s a gateway that manages your brand voice, increases website visits, and drives purchases. It sends personalized messages to subscribers and encourages them to trust your product or services.
How do I set email marketing goals?
You can set email marketing goals by evaluating where you want your business to achieve. You can also set email marketing goals by tracking your customer preferences.
This allows you to set SMART goals that will benefit your business in the long term.
Can email marketing help with feedback collection?
Email marketing can help collect feedback through targeted surveys, feedback forms, and follow-up emails.
Once you know your customers’ interests or they’ve made a purchase, you can send emails to get their opinions. If your customers disappear, sending a follow-up email will even help you win them back.
