What are the elements of an email marketing strategy?

Email marketing is one of the best ways to stay in touch with your customers, promote new offerings, and build your audience. There are many different approaches you can take, and the cost of email marketing will depend on your business goals.

USDP plans, writes, designs, and executes email campaigns for everything from sales drip sequences to marketing newsletters. Whether you’re a nonprofit hoping to increase charitable donations, a manufacturer looking to sell machinery, or any business wanting to educate your audience with thought leadership, then email marketing should be a core element of your content strategy.

Before talking numbers, we’ll give you background into our email marketing strategy for clients.

Email marketing basics

Take a holistic approach

Creating marketing momentum is not a one and done sprint. It takes time to do well.

Building a holistic marketing plan is important for maintaining your marketing longevity. Clarifying your messaging and the identity of your brand first will provide you a strong foundation from which to market.

Drive engagement through email campaigns

Email marketing is key for keeping your audience engaged, and consistency is important. Weekly or bi-monthly emails are opportunities to provide updates on your business, announce new products, and get feedback from customers.

Strike a balance in your email cadence

While email marketing needs to be consistent and robust, there’s such a thing as too many emails. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience with daily pings to their inbox. That’s a great way to lose subscribers and frustrate your customers. Each email should hold as much value for the customer as it does for your business. Ask yourself how you’re helping your audience in their hero’s journey with every email you send.

Elements of an email marketing project

So how does USDP conduct email marketing for our clients?

Since every client has different goals, we tailor each email marketing strategy accordingly.

Slow and steady wins the race

Digital marketing is a lot more like physical therapy than it is like plastic surgery. Physical therapy should be consistent and sometimes it hurts! But, it builds a stronger foundation for recovery and can leave you even better off than you were before.

USDP likes to work with clients on a longer-term basis, providing consistent email marketing that builds up their audience over time.

Data analysis

By working with USDP on a month-to-month basis for email marketing, lots of great data can be gathered and used to inform the ongoing marketing approach. One month of 4-6 emails won’t cut it if you’re looking to make a marketing splash. Building an organic email list is always superior to a list of bots that tank your open rates.

USDP’s month-to-month content creation and performance analysis grows in value as click rates, open rates, and content strategies are honed and perfected for your business.

Email marketing is a fluid exercise

When conducting email marketing, the journey is just as important as the destination. As your months and years of email marketing progress, your business will reach its goals and be able to set new ones.

Email marketing requires constant content creation, frequent pivoting, and lots of valuable experimentation. Get comfortable with looking at the big picture and thinking long-term.

USDP’s approach to email marketing

Content strategy

USDP will set up strategy meetings with your team to discuss your goals and determine what kind of email marketing content will be most effective. Planning meetings with key leaders from your business will inform the best ideas and opportunities for email campaigns. A content calendar will help us schedule campaigns and plan ahead.

Behind the scenes

Depending on your current email marketing activity, USDP will help set up the best CRM platform for you. If you’re in need of a switch, our team will assess multiple email marketing platforms and finalize the tool that’s best for you. USDP can assist with domain set-up, connecting to website forms, uploading and organizing email lists, and building email templates.

Campaign execution

USDP will research your audience’s common questions and concerns, making sure to harness keywords and current search behavior. Using that research we’ll create content-rich and beautifully-designed email campaigns based on your audience’s needs and your goals.

Reporting

USDP will handle the reporting so you don’t have to. Our team will interpret the results and present you with the data gathered after each campaign. Interpreting the reporting and discussing it with clients allows us to keep tabs on the effectiveness of campaigns and fine tune the messaging.

The cost of email marketing

Monthly email campaign pricing can range from $4,500 - $6,500, depending on amount and frequency of content creation.

USDP works with clients to offer different tiers of email marketing. Depending on what parts of the process we are executing, the pricing will vary. A client may need help with content strategy and generating ideas, but will write and post on their own. Other clients prefer to hire USDP for the entire process, so it’s off their plate.

Start email marketing with USDP

If USDP is doing email marketing for a client, chances are we’re also working with them on other aspects of their marketing journey.

If you’re interested in learning more about the cost of email marketing, set up a call with one of our client leaders.