Email marketing is the fastest way to boost a business’ ROI in the long run, on top of being the cheapest way of advertising. With a nearly inexhaustible potential to grow, email marketing remains the single most efficient way to increase the visibility of a brand while maintaining a reliable feedback system.

In fact, 95% of grown-ups use email services on a daily basis, spending an average of 5.4 hours every day browsing new emails. The great majority of emails are being accessed on mobile devices, so the golden rule of email marketing done right is to make mobile-ready campaigns and optimize your website for mobile devices. In a nutshell, that means a responsive site, suitable font size and minimum loading time.

So, how do you go about creating a marketing plan as quickly as possible?

The Goals of Email Marketing

First of all, you should be guided by three simple goals:

• Attracting new customers
• Enhancing the relationship with the existing customers
• Increasing revenue

Use insights to get an idea of your customers’ wishes so that you may better personalize your emails and other digital forms of communication.

These are the tips everyone knows about, but still many struggles with in regards to a marketing plan. Why?

Simply put, it’s because they don’t know how to go about “the boring stuff,” which usually includes “when” and “how.”

It is of utmost importance to have a schedule and know exactly which offers to send and when to send them. At the most basic level, you’ll wish to adhere to your customers’ time zones. You’ll also wish to send them only personalized offers with stellar subject lines, as to avoid your messages being flagged as spam.

Drafting a Marketing Calendar

To draft a marketing calendar fast, you’ll wish to either use a sheet or download one of many calendars available for free online (Google it).

Start with an annual plan (include all months in a year) and mark the important dates. These may include the dates of special promotions, holiday sales and similar.

Now, it is a well-known fact that some months are “slower” than the others. Normally, people would go on holiday in the summer, but that doesn’t mean that you should be idle.

There are several strategies to stay on top of your customers’ minds when they are in a holiday-mode, most common of which is keeping in touch with newsletters. Contrary to popular belief, newsletters should be concise. Don’t elaborate too much and keep it as short as possible by including only relevant information and a call to action.

Never omit calls-to-action. Even the finest of marketing emails will fall short of your expectations if the recipients don’t have a clue how to perform the desired action.

Finally, getting creative during slower months is a great way to keep your customers engaged. There are many small-scale events people like to cherish, like Black Cat Day (October 27), World Chocolate Day (July 7), Book Lovers Day (August 9), Towel Day (May 25), and so on.

Decide on Promotions

Now that you’ve got the timeline straight, it’s time to think of the type of content you wish to send. Needless to say, the emails need to be relevant to the occasion, otherwise, the recipients will discard your messages as click-bait. Once that happens, you’ve lost the customer for good. Which is no good.

Not much wisdom is required when it comes to annual and seasonal sales, except that they should be announced in a timely manner. When it comes to filling in the blanks with small and lesser-known holidays (like Black Cat Day), you need to come up with a relevant offer.

Let’s take World Chocolate Day as an example. If you’re attempting to engage your customers, you’ll wish to offer chocolate-themed products. Even if you don’t sell chocolate, you can, say, offer a free chocolate treat for every purchase. A similar approach may be used for every other holiday and special occasion.

Remember to follow up with a social media post for best results. The more people see the offer, the more likely they are to share it and, in turn, attract more customers to your brand.

In terms of creating a fast email strategy, that would mean that you should write down the ideas for the occasion in your sheet.

Also, it is important to keep in mind that not all emails need to be promotional. Non-promotional emails are equally important, as they will make the recipients feel special. Remember that the feedback is of utmost importance for the long-term success of your brand. Non-promotional messages may feature a link to a blog post or a video.

As for time-based promotions, they should include specific calls to action and an equally specific and relevant offer. For these types of emails to be maximally efficient, it is important to announce them beforehand.

The best practice is to send an announcement, approximately two weeks prior to the promotion, a reminder one week prior to the promotion, and another reminder (remember those “the last chance emails”?) a day prior to the promotion.

Finishing Touches

Marking important dates for sending your emails is a good enough strategy, to begin with. Take your time prior to every scheduled date to brainstorm the actual offer and do write that message professionally.

If you run a large brand, automation is the right choice for you. Do your homework with scheduling, and you’re good to go.

Last but not least, don’t overlook cart abandonment emails. This type of engagement cannot be foreseen and, hence, included in your email marketing plan. But every time a customer gives up shopping on your website, mark it on the calendar so that you can send a reminder later on.

In this way, you will save precious time as you won’t need to go over the overbearing statistics later on and write down large numbers of abandoned actions.

In fact, if you follow up with each customer in a couple of days and send them relevant offers, reminders to finish the purchase or simply ask for their feedback (what went wrong with the purchase?), you will be surprised with the increase in ROI to follow.

Email marketing is, after all, all about communication. Make people feel special, make your offer relevant and affordable, and your customers won’t look elsewhere for their next purchase. It’s as simple as that.