EMAIL MARKETING CHECKLIST
BUILD THE FOUNDATION
DISCOVERY: PURPOSE & GOALS
Envision a program where there is demand from your audience. Brainstorm with your team and begin to define the type of email program you anticipate building. What will be your content purpose? What kind of experience would you like your audience to have? Discuss examples of companies that are doing it right and those that are falling behind. Where can you adopt essential elements, but also stay on brand?
IDENTIFY AUDIENCE(S)
Start to build your audience persona(s) to answer the Who, What, When, Where & Why. What does their day entail? What are their needs beyond your product? Why do they care? What are the jobs to be done to fulfill their obligations?
LISTEN
Listen by way of ongoing one-on-one interviews & surveys with sales, customer service teams, front line team members, etc. to discover what questions are being asked. Use this knowledge to strengthen your audience persona(s) and to reinforce your content.
ANSWER 5 "WHY'S"
Get to the core of the mindset of your audience by continuing to ask “Why.” “Why do they care?” How can you help them grow outside the product or service you offer?
CREATE AN EMAIL CALENDAR
A content calendar populated with a minimum of three months of your email marketing plan will keep your program alive, on time, and operate smoothly.
IMPLEMENTATION
WRITE MEANINGFUL CONTENT
What form of content will differentiate your company? How can you motivate your audience based on what you learned thus far? Where can you personalize content for greater engagement? We recommend starting with your lifecycle and most relevant email campaigns first such as a welcome series, birthday, anniversary, reengagement or reminder campaign. Conceive each email with a goal in mind.
DESIGN & DEVELOP EMAILS
Using the knowledge gained, design, develop and test your email campaign(s). Integrate with your CRM to streamline and expand your data for deeper personalization. Use an internal checklist to keep your process and team members on task and to ensure your email will launch as intended without error.
Assign a team member to monitor feedback loops to personally reply and answer questions, providing a better customer experience. Keep a feedback log for ongoing assessment and listening opportunities.
TEST, TEST & RETEST
Test how your email campaign renders in various email clients using a tool such as Litmus. Look at your subject line(s), preheader(s) and conduct a SPAM check if available. If everything is a go, send to your internal test group for final feedback. Once approved, perform an A/B split test for direct input from a small percentage of your audience before launching to the rest.
MEASURE
Has your email program met the goals you established at the beginning? What about the goals you set for each email campaign? What do your email send history and analytics tool have to say about audience engagement? Use a visualization tool to build a dashboard showing your email metrics over time to identify trends, gaps, and program success.
REFINE
Adjust the journeys, content, and designs to adapt to your audience and meet goals. Use your data and experience to improve and build on your foundation incrementally.