An email marketing strategy has four main components: the problem, raw data, solutions, and a roadmap.
The problem
What problems is your product or service facing currently? What are the obstacles in your way? What are you trying to solve with a strategy in the first place? Is it a lack of trust, a heavily saturated market, or a lack of brand awareness?
Whatever the problem may be, you should identify it within your strategy outline.
Research and raw data
Research can help you figure out what your target audience thinks about your competitors or your product. You see, researching what features your competitors have isn’t enough. You should know what their audiences like/dislike about them. It’s also beneficial to research what your competitors lack in their communication.
The research stage is quite labor-intensive. To figure out who your real competitors are and what problems users are facing, you need to start the customer development process. This framework will help you identify your target audience and see whether your product meets their needs or could be improved.
Alternatively, you can create a team of researchers who will conduct surveys and explore online platforms to find honest reviews about your competitors’ products.
Solutions
The solutions portion should identify how you’re going to solve each problem. For example, if your main problem is a lack of trust, the solution would be gathering testimonials from your current users. Similarly, if you’re struggling with proper brand awareness, the solution could be educational guides, product overviews, carefully-planned messaging and positioning, etc.
A roadmap to implement those solutions
The final component of the email marketing strategy is the roadmap, which will detail how you’re going to implement each solution.
Let’s spiral back to lack of trust. We mentioned that gathering testimonials could be the solution. But how are you going to do that? One way is to run survey email campaigns among your existing users. In return, you could offer them a 10% discount or an upgrade of their current plan free of charge.
Another option is to write case studies about your corporate clients and share them in your email marketing campaigns to build customer loyalty.
Overall, the roadmap should include an email content plan and a schedule for each marketing campaign.
To discover the types of email marketing strategies and learn how to create one, read more in our guide on email marketing strategy templates.