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Creating an email marketing strategy does not have to be that complicated. The following there are just few steps that will help you plan your work and work your plan in no time.

 

Choose Your Tools

 

To find the right tools is the first step in your strategy to begin with. A lot of these platforms are very powerful and can be of help to you in organizing and sending your emails at the drop of a hat.

Email Marketing Tools
Some of the common email marketing tools that you might consider to use are:

1. MailChimp
2. Campaign Monitor
3. Constant Contact
4. ActiveCampaign
This is just a short list in a sea of other email tools that you could use. You can find the tool that fits your team based on what you want to accomplish with your email marketing.

Marketing Automation Tools
You might not just want to stop at a simple email marketing tool. You may also want to consider adding a marketing automation tool to your list.

The Marketing automation makes it pretty easy for you to follow up with your customers and also send subscribers the right email at the right time based on how your customers are interacting with your website. Some of the email marketing platforms have basic marketing automation features built-in — for example; like the option to send birthday email messages automatically.

It is worth taking some time for you to figure out the depths of marketing automation that you need and your bandwidth for maintaining the automation initiatives. These activities sometimes can take a big chunk of time to manage.

These are Potential automation tools to add to your list:

The Autopilot: Autopilot makes it very easy to plan journeys and to also trigger the send your subscribers emails based on how they are interacting with your website.

The Userfox: Userfox is a small, an email-focused automation tool that sends emails to the subscribers based on the events that you put into the system. The Userfox was bought by the Adroll Group in the year 2014.

The HubSpot: Hubspot does not have as much of the email automation functionality as the other two that is on this list, but it is suited for those companies who want to control multiple aspects from one tool.

The Marketo: This is a powerful marketing automation tool that is most suitable for enterprise-level marketers.

The Pardot: The Pardot is a full solution that helps the marketers to create meaningful connections, and to generate more pipeline, also to empower sales to close more deals.

This marketing automation option fits well if you make use of the Salesforce as your CRM.
Once you have your tools, you’ll need to add them to the first slide in your email marketing strategy template like the list below:

Tool selection slide from template

Action Items:

1. Research email marketing tools.
2. Compare which ones will work best for your marketing team.
3. Add them to your strategy template.

Managing email marketing successfully is not very easy to achieve, especially when you have multiple email initiatives going on at once.

The value of email marketing is undeniable, so it is really not surprising that many departments within your organization want to just leverage the platform. This results in lots of different moving pieces to consider and also many stakeholders to please. It also make increase the chances of you accidentally sending multiple emails to the same person just in one day.

If we should speak from personal experience… the fallout of this is not pretty at all.

Here are just a few pieces of the puzzle that you will have to consider:

1. Managing your ever-growing subscriber list
2. Overseeing the design and copy of every email
3. Scheduling delivery times
4. A/B testing
5. Analyzing results
All these are just scratching the surface.

One thing is very clear: if you are going to be successful at email marketing, then you will need a well-planned marketing strategy in place; one that clearly establishes the goals and the lays out of the roadmap to achieve them.

We’ll be giving you something that can guide your team toward success.

 

Here is how to plan your entire email marketing strategy via the @CoSchedule

 

Downloading Your Email Marketing Strategy Template

Before you continue to read, you will need to download your email marketing strategy template. This ‘easy to use’ PowerPoint will be of help to you if you want to document your plan and give the rest of your email team something that they can refer back to when they have questions.

Download Graphic
Get Your Email Marketing Strategy Template Now
Plus, you will need to stay up to date.
The Best Way for you to Organize an Effective Email Marketing Strategy via @CoSchedule

Then Manage Email Marketing With The CoSchedule

If you are just new to the CoSchedule, it is the only marketing suite to manage every facet of your marketing.

It even integrates with the popular email marketing services giving you the ultimate visibility into your email strategy, so you will never send multiple emails to the same person in just one day again.

Visual of how you can schedule your emails through CoSchedule

With Email Marketing from CoSchedule, you can:

Seamlessly integrate with your favorite email marketing platform. Email platforms are very powerful, and you have grown to know and to love yours. Why give it up now? CoSchedule integrates with many preferred platforms, so that your email marketing is no longer disjointed from the rest of your marketing initiatives.

You can write a click-worthy email subject lines every time. The CoSchedule’s awesome Email Subject Line Tester is built right in, so that you can optimize and you can perfect every subject line to drive more opens, clicks, and conversions also.

You can get full visibility into your ENTIRE marketing strategy. The disjointed marketing content and the constant jumping from screen to screen is the worst. With the Email Marketing from CoSchedule, all of your email campaigns live on your single marketing calendar — giving you the ultimate visibility into your marketing strategy and the individual initiatives.

For any business generating conversions or monetizing their website the Automation is a must. And of all your marketing channels, the email marketing is most positively impacted by the automation.

The Email automation capabilities are especially critical for you to achieve email marketing best practices, such as the optimized send times and the personalization.

 

1. Lead more subscribers to your blog or your website.

In all these messages that you are sending to your subscribers you can also direct them to your blog, to your website, your video channel also, and your series of articles that you have written. All of these different channels that are displaying informations about you and your business are really helpful. If you have some things in your business that the people want, then they will want to know about how you can acquire these offerings of your business. An autoresponder message can help you direct them to the exact place they need to be to find out more of the information they need to make the buying decision.

 

2. Obtain measurable results.

The Autoresponders have built-in measuring devices which will give you the information on where your subscribers are located. You can also find out more on which messages are read by the most subscribers and the format future messages to get more readers to open them. You can find out when the best time of the day is to for you to send messages to your subscribers so that they can read them right away. The autoresponder will help you keep track of the number of new subscribers each day. Making use of these results, you can decide what future information and the messages you will be sending to your subscribers.

 

3. Ensure better e-mail delivery.

The Autoresponders are specially designed to get the e-mails that are located in the autoresponder system and they are delivered on time to all of your subscriber list. These specialized autoresponder systems works better than other of the e-mail delivery systems. Therefore you can be very confident that your messages are getting delivered to your subscribers.

 

4. Brand yourself with all the e-mails.

You can also brand yourself and your company in all your e-mails that you are sending to your subscribers just by simply adding your logo, also you can add your tagline, you can add your physical address even, your phone number, and anything else that you want to keep an emphasis on about your business in the minds of your subscribers.

 

5. Allows you to easily duplicate your efforts.

You can also duplicate all of these tasks once you have done them one time for one list. You can have your different lists for groups of subscribers in other of the categories, for different product lines, for other services, or for any other reason why you would want to have a separate list from the one you have to send messages to separate subscribers.

On the month April 26th 2021, the ATT was officially launched. Apps must first get users permission for them to track data, and they also explain why you will want to track additional user information (like their emails) when you submit your app to Apple for a review.

ATT tracking Facebook update from the blog post

This update is likely to have an impact on custom audiences from site and the app activity, and Facebook has acknowledged that it may also impact the accuracy of both the tracking and the ad optimization. While this will only be true for those users of mobile iOS and their activity in-app, this may also still have a wide-reaching impact. You can still learn more about how to prepare.

Facebook Addresses The COVID-19 Misinformation

Unfortunately, the misinformation that is on Facebook is nothing new, and it has now potentially reached an all-new level of dangerous during this COVID-19.

Months back, Facebook shared what it has been doing to address the misinformation about COVID. So far, they have created a global network of over 80 independent fact-checkers who are reviewing content across over the 60 different languages, aided by the AI advancements. The AI tools currently have been removing the COVID-19 misinformation that is flagged by global experts, removing a total number of about 12 million pieces of content about the virus and also about its vaccine.

While this has been controversial amongst some users, it is still interesting to see how Facebook has responded to this misinformation and understand the process that is behind it. We can assume that this is how they will have to handle the misinformation regarding the objective, the science-based information in the future.

New Business Suite Features
The Facebook’s Business Suite that was launched last year, and it is like a central hub for your Facebook and even for the Instagram marketing.

Last month, they rolled out some new features to the business suite, this features including the following:

1. The ability to schedule and to post Stories to the both Facebook and the Instagram, which is fairly groundbreaking
2. The option to edit scheduled posts
3. The ability to create, to edit, and to manage albums
4. Saving posts in a draft mode

Facebook update business suite showing post scheduling

The Stories posting and the scheduling feature is the biggest standout here, as that is something that most of the users do not have access to just yet.

New Dynamic Ads for Streaming
If you have done a double-take when you read “dynamic ads for streaming,” then you are not alone, but it is a really exciting new feature.

These ads are meant to be of help to video streaming brands to show off their content to their target audience. When they view the ad, they can swipe through the slides to see more different personalized suggestions that are relevant to them. They are very similar to the Facebook’s traditional dynamic ads, only that they show off different media titles instead of showing off products.

The Live Shopping Fridays Announced
It feels a little like the QVC’s

infomercials have come to a full circle, but we are unbelievably excited about the Facebook’s new announcement of the “Live Shopping Fridays.”

Which started in mid-May and is now running every Friday through the July 16th, beauty and fashion brands will also go Live and showcase the beauty and the fashion products and tutorials in real time. You can find these streams on the participating brands’ Pages or by simply browsing the Shopping tab.

Users will now be able to purchase products that is featured in-stream by just tapping on them while viewing, and they also can purchase without ever leaving the app.

Facebook live shopping Fridays

These list below are the current topics and dates on the map:

1. Glow Up – May 21, June 11 and July 2 12:00PM – 1:30PM PT/3:00PM – 4:30PM PT
2. New Fashion Finds – May 28, June 18 and July 9 12:00PM – 1:30PM PT/3:00PM – 4:30PM PT
3. Self Care Spotlight – June 4, June 25 and July 16 12:00PM – 1:30PM PT/3:00PM – 4:30PM PT

While only those major brands like the Abercrombie & the Fitch and the Bobbi Brown Cosmetics are also participating this year, it will be a very interesting one to see if more advertisers will gain access to the live shopping features on a more regular basis. Just stay tuned!

 

Final Thoughts

While the month was seen as a relatively slow month for Facebook updates overall, the information and the new features that we have gained are very valuable.

A breakdown that is done of the ad review process is a good reminder for users who are just unfamiliar with how things works and the consequences of trying to game the system, for example.

The biggest standout feature that was announced here for Facebook alone is the Live Shopping Fridays, and it will be really fascinating to see how effective these campaigns are and whether we will even see a more “semi-permanent” shopping feature that will roll out to more advertisers overtime.

In the meantime, this is for your reminder also to check in with your ad campaigns since you now see that the iOS 14.5 and the ATT are in full swing. You should always watch those campaigns closely, and also look at some new ways to adapt if your campaigns take any hits outside of the expected reductions in efficacy of the website and the data tracking for reporting purposes.

What do you think? Which of these updates you feel that you are most excited about? What do you really want to see next?

The ATT Is Here
The Apple’s AppTracking Transparency update has for awhile now been the talk of the town even for a few months now. Since this app would require that all the other apps obtained user consent to freely collect user data (instead of having the users opted-in as a default option that they would need to proactively opt-out of), we have know early on that this could have an enormous impact on the Facebook Advertisers who make use of this information to serve better ads and the on-platform experiences to its users.

Facebook Reporting An Efficacy of Its Platform Safety & Also The Integrity Measures

Over the past few years, many of the users have been worried about Facebook’s use of their personal data, as well as the issues with transparency,the hate speech, and also the misinformation.

While all of these mentioned issues are still in play and are still having impact on users, the good news is that the Facebook’s updated platform safety and integrity rules are now making a positive impact towards this issues.

In the first quarter of the year 2021, we saw some the following improvements:

1. Violent and graphic content has decreased to .03%, and down .05% from the last quarter
2. Hate speech also has decreased from .07-.08% to .05-.06%
3. The rate of content “actions” has been taken 10x higher, and we have seen the proactive rate shift from around 24% to 97%.

Facebook impact of brand safety tools on platform

This is a great news for brands, because this will create a more positive and a safe platform for all the users.

 

The New Instagram Insights for Reels & Also The Live Video

The Instagram Reels and Live are two very exceptionally valuable features on the Instagram. They are currently both popular and also capable of driving reach, driving engagement, and even the brand awareness.

It is a great news, therefore, that we are getting a new native data for both if them to assess their performance and to also impact on our overall marketing strategies. This will be found under the Instagram’s Insights, which you have access to already as a Business or as a Creator account.

Insights for Instagram Reels

Reels will get the following metrics:

1. Plays
2. Accounts reached
3. Likes
4. Comments
5. Saves
6. Shares

The Live videos will get the following:

1. Accounts reached
2. Peak concurrent viewers
3. Comments
4. Shares
These metrics gotten will also be added to the Account Insights, to help get a better big picture look of the campaigns’ impact.

Also more good news: Now over the next few months, the Instagram has been working to roll out new preset time frame options so as to let marketers view beyond the 7 or the 30 day periods. Insights will be supported also on the desktop. You need to stay tuned for that!

New Tools for The Asian & The Pacific-Islander Owned Businesses
A recent study had showed that the API-owned businesses have been the most harshly impacted of all the demographic groups during the time of pandemic, seeing a decrease of about 20% in working business owners from the February to December of the year 2020.

Starting from on the May 17th, Facebook has invited users and the businesses to support the Amplify API program. They offered content and offered training opportunities which is tailored to API-owned small and medium-sized businesses, and they are committed to spotlighting and to showcasing small businesses from around the API community.

We are running to the tail end of the year, and we are also moving into the beautiful summer weather. And it is not only the beach trips, the family holidays, and the backyard barbecues we are going to be looking forward to; we have got information on the Facebook news and also updates, too.

We have got news about how the Facebook’s ad review process works, the information about how the safety features have really impacted on the Facebook, the new Instagram Insights tools, the Live Shopping Fridays, and the new API tools for the Asian and the Pacific Islander businesses.

There is also plenty for us to look at, so let’s get started.

Facebook Currently Breaking Down Its “Ad Policy Review Process”
We know that the system of Facebook looks at all of the ads that you submit, reviewing them before they run them. Many people have long been confused why the ads that seemingly follow the rules are most times been rejected while obvious scams ads somehow make it through.

To make increase transparency, Facebook has recently just broken down how their ad review process behaviour is and how it works, and it has been extremely enlightening.

First, they had to remind their users that it is not just about the strict advertising policies that apply to the Facebook Ads. You should also need to check to ensure that each of the ad complies with the branded content policies, the commerce policies, the event policies, and more (if it is applicable). You have got to be following all of the Facebook’s rules that is in the ad platform.

Facebook Ad policy tree

They also had to explain that, as many of our users may have taken note, that most of the ads are typically approved within 24 hours time. I have had ads approved in a very short time, as little as five minutes, as I am very sure many of our readers have, too.

When you first submitted an ad, they will need to use an automated review that uses the machine learning and the algorithms to flag any potential issues at all. The approved ad can then run, and may sometimes be subject to human review later on. If the sent ad is rejected, you can still appeal and submit it to a human review. They had to bring it users notice that if an ad is rejected, they can always edit it and then resubmit.

Facebook has also warned advertisers that in the addition to reviewing an individual ads, they will need to look well at an advertiser’s profile overall.

Have you ever made an attempt to get around the ad review process in the past time, or to find any loopholes? Are a large number of your ads being rejected, or being reported by users? Facebook may take action against those advertisers who consistently violate their policies, this actions includes suspension or even banning.

 

The Sendinblue’s usability is very intuitive and it has not missed any important features at all.

There are three methods for you to add contacts: the copy-pasting, the import email contacts from a file, and the adding contacts individually. All of these methods are quite intuitive to use. However, during this process, the Sendinblue’s data mapping function will ask you to match the extra information to an email address, which can be optional but is not stated clearly during the process.

The Sendinblue’s email design tool is the place where they shine the most. You start first by creating a campaign and then insert some basic information. The layout of the editor is the compact and it does not utilize many popup windows to give an obstruction to the view. You have just three options for creating your email: the drag & drop, the “Rich Text Editor”, and the custom HTML code. All of these options are pretty smooth and user-friendly. You can also possibly preview your created email with the desktop, the tablet, and the mobile views.

Sendinblue email editor

Before you can start sending your email to your contacts, you need to go through a summary page that showcases the setup, the design, and the contact information. This is a very great feature to double-check if everything is actually correct before you finally hit that Send button.

 

Mobile Editor

Sendinblue does not have a standalone mobile application. However, the editor that they have is fully functional in the mobile browser.

Features
The Sendinblue’s email marketing tools are simply packing modern features. These features they have enables you to take an advantage of all the latest trends that is in the world email marketing. Although some of the more advanced features are just locked behind the higher-tier plans, the free plan’s base features that offers enough to get started with your email campaigns.

The main features that we will be emphasizing more are an unlimited number of contacts and details, the intuitive drag & drop based design tool, the email personalization, the mobile-friendliness, the customer segmentation options, and the custom email automation rules. You also are assured of getting a fully-functional CRM for building sales funnels, a live chat plugin, and an access to modify Facebook ads directly in the Sendinblue’s campaign management tool.

The Sendinblue’s customer support is also accessible over the email just by default. You can also be able to reach them through phone and through live chat, but only starting from the Premium plan. They do have an extensive knowledge base with all the useful articles that you can browse for information.

 

Pricing & Plans

The Sendinblue officially offers four different plans: the Free, the Lite, the Premium, and the Enterprise. However, there is another plan named Lite+, which adds some usability for an additional monthly fee. Together with the free plan, all the plans have the necessary functionality to design and to start an email campaign.

 

Sendinblue email marketing plans

Apart from the free plan, Sendinblue’s cheapest plan starts at the rate of $25/month with 10,000 emails ($0.0025/email).

Sendinblue offers both the free and the paid plans.

The whole of this process from the start to finish feels really smooth, it is user-friendly, and you will have a ton of options along the way. However, the experience would be even get better when you have a built-in image editor.

You can easily add your contacts via the quick-action buttons from the dashboard. You can select to upload your contacts individually or to import them from a file. Depending on your how your contact list’s size is, the importing may take a couple of seconds or sometimes up to a few hours.

Building your email is somewhat straightforward, and you can pick a pre-designed template, first start from a blank template, or insert your HTML code in the editor. If you are working with a template it gives you access to the drag and drop tools and the building blocks toolbar. You’ll enjoy especially the block’s name display when you start hovering over an inserted building block. You can also preview your emails when created in the desktop or mobile view making sure the content looks great on all the devices.

GetResponse email editor

The GetResponse also gives you the access to thousands of free stock photos and an integrated Shutterstock gallery. However, the latter does not come free, but you can still purchase the desired image after you have previewed it in the editor. Unfortunately, they are lacking an internal image editor, so when you have uploaded your image, make sure that you have already edited it.

Once you have created your email, you will be directed to the summary page. Here you can name your campaign, you can write the subject line, and you can add your email recipients. Most of these options given open a popup window and do not redirect you to a different page, except when you are going to redo the editing phase.

 

Mobile Editor
The GetResponse has a mobile application that you can make use of to access your data, to create emails, and to manage your contacts. However, the email editor that is in the app is disappointing. The customization and the personalization options are minimal, and you can only be able to create your text-based messages (minus some emotions).

Features
The GetResponse focuses heavily on the webinars and the eCommerce sites. In fact, you get tools for both of them with even the starter plan. Of course, that does not mean that this service is not working with other businesses – quite the opposite.

Since the pricing model is based on the subscriber count, you can possibly send out an unlimited number of emails to your list. The other main features that are available are a drag and drop email design tool, the mobile-friendly emails, the dynamic content based on the customer segmentation, and the automated email options for bloggers.

The GetResponse’s customer support is always available 24/7 over the live chat and the email, which is reassuring, especially if you are new to the email marketing. Once you opt for a custom plan, you will also get the additional phone support, the Slack channel option, and a dedicated support person.

Pricing & Plans
The GetResponse’s pricing model is basically based on the number of contacts that you have on your list. You can for sure get the best prices with a 2-year commitment.

GetResponse Pricing Plans

The cheapest plan for GetResponse starts at $10.50/month with a number of 1,000 contacts ($0.0105/contact).

GetResponse does not have a refund policy with their paid plans, but you can still try out their service for 30-days. The trial version does not require your credit card details at all, either.

The ConvertKit’s user experience is very simplistic, maybe even too bare-bones. You might miss out on some of those modern features like a drag and drop editor tool or even a more comprehensive selection of of templates, but you can assurely get the job done fast.

You can start building your email list in three ways: you can add individual contacts, you can upload emails in bulk from a CSV file, or you can import your email contacts from another service. Even though there is not an option for you to copy-paste your data, you can easily create a CSV file so that you bypass this inconvenience. The ConvertKit only gives supports to one list of contacts, and you can organize them by using the tags.

Building your email is the place where things get a bit clunky. The ConvertKit does not have a modern drag and drop builder you that you can use, and the only options for you are plain text and custom HTML code. There is also a confusing process if you are selecting a template, and there are only three options available. However, we like that the plain text editor is so robust and not cluttered with the endless possibilities that can confuse the beginners. You can still access several of the editing options by highlighting a line of text.

 

ConvertKit email editor

The next step will take you to the preview area, where you can view the full message and then you double-check if it is ready to go. You will then see the option to send the email immediately or to schedule it to a later date.

 

Mobile Editor

The ConvertKit does not have a dedicated mobile application. However, their email editor and their dashboard are pretty easy to access from your preferred mobile browser with full functionality.

 

Features

The ConvertKit’s feature list is quite a typical one for a modern email marketing service. They greatly emphasize on the support of your growth and even have a cleverly crafted course for building and for launching your email marketing campaigns.

ConvertKit allows you to send out an unlimited number of emails to your contacts. The other main features are the email automation options, the personalized content, the sign-up form builder, the tag-based customer segmentation, and the 70+ integrations with various 3rd party applications.

Their customer support is always available over live chat but during business hours. However, you can still create an email ticket to help contact support outside of this time. You will get the upgraded support features with the paid plans, namely the Premium and the Priority support. The ConvertKit also has a wide array of very useful marketing articles and also a knowledge base that you can make use of for further information about the service or the email marketing in general.

 

Pricing & Plans

The ConvertKit offers both the free and the paid plans. The paid plans are the subscriber-based, and they provide you also with a free migration option if need be for you to move your data from another email marketing service.

 

ConvertKit pricing plans

The cheapest paid plan starts from the range of $25/month (annual payment) with 1,000 contacts ($0.025/contact).

The ConvertKit offers a 14-day free trial for their paid plans up to 35,000 contacts. If you have more than that, then you are qualified for a personalized demo from the company.