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This blog post is about Enterprise Email Marketing and the 9 steps that you need to understand in order to really begin to improve your email campaigns. The basic premise is that everyone already knows about email marketing and how to do it, so therefore there is nothing left to learn.

Not surprisingly, we believe that there is a lot to learn. We also believe that for the 9 steps of Enterprise Email Marketing to add value to your campaigns, you need to learn and understand email marketing processes.

The 9 Steps

1.       The Data. This success of your email campaign largely depends on the quality of your data. You should also have a strategy for your existing data and look at how you will add to your data.  Think about the format of your data and how easy it is to manipulate so that it can be used for your campaigns.

2.       Objective. If we work on the basis that you have great data, then the email objective should be not to waste that data. This means that you should take the time to plan your email campaigns as you would any other marketing activity. Before you move on from this step, establish whether your email falls into one of the following categories: awareness, sales, leadership, information or events.

3.       Roles. This is about understanding the roles of your team. Specifically, who is writing the content, who is responsible for the campaign objectives, who edits, who sends and who tests. In a large team environment, it is very important to have this part of the process documented so that ownership is never an issue.

4.       Process. The process is a collection of the two previous steps. It is usually documented and becomes a way to check progress. It is also about the process of testing your email campaign; during your objective stage you may well have come up with a number of good ideas. Email allows you to test different ideas, plan for this during your process and you will begin to see which campaigns and ideas work best.

5.       Template. The template is always an emotive stage and you may find that you are restricted in what you can do. In our experience, the simpler the template the better. Remember that this is an email, which most often will open in a program like Outlook.

6.       Delivery. The great thing about email is that you can plan ahead and schedule your emails. You should really take advantage of this. If you are an experienced user, then consider the use of triggers to take your email campaigns to the next level.

7.       Compose/Send. We advise that if you’re sending a branded newsletter then you should be consistent and send roughly at the same time each month. Before you send any email, test it. Send it to as many as ten different people and check to see how it is presented.

8.       Analyse the data. In our opinion, analysing an email campaign is as almost important as your data. Take advantage of the fact that email marketing provides you with real time information about your click through rates, unsubscribe rates and your most popular content. Having information like this at your fingertips means that you should always strive to improve your campaigns based upon tangible data.

9.       Build, grow and repeat. Continue to grow your data lists, analyse your campaigns and repeat. Learn from what was good and what was bad and do not be afraid to tweak your campaigns.

What to do next? We’d love to hear from you, post your comments and feedback below. If you would like to speak to Generate UK, please feel free to contact us on 0845 388 9185 or via our contact page.

Special Offer: If you have read this post and would like to learn more about how Enterprise Email Marketing can help your business, contact us immediately for details of how we can help you. Quote the title of this blog for a 20% discount on all services, software or support.