email marketing plan Archives - Nadine MullingsNadine Mullings

November

08 2016

How to Plan for Your Business Success

No matter what marketing strategy you decide to pursue for your business, in order to be successful, your effort CANNOT be random, being successful with marketing requires planning for your success!

November is a great time to get an early start on your Marketing Plan for the next year. Putting together a Simple Marketing Plan can ensure for a more successful year. Too many coaches, consultants and entrepreneurs practice Random Acts of Marketing (R.A.M.) with no real strategy or plan for their businesses.

I’m on a mission to help coaches, consultants, and entrepreneurs to be less random and more strategic. In this blog post, I will walk you through a simple strategy for success called The B.E.S.T. Marketing Plan™. The B.E.S.T. Marketing Plan follows four core marketing strategies for growing your business as a coach or consultant:

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Posted by Nadine Mullings | Comments Off | in Business Planning, Marketing, Marketing for Coaches, Marketing for Consultants

April

07 2016

Why You Shouldn’t Build Your Email List

Email Marketing is one of the B.E.S.T. modern marketing strategies and one that I always recommend for coaches, consultants, and service business owners.

However, having an effective email marketing strategy can be challenging. One of the key pieces of your email marketing puzzle is your email list. If you don’t have a list, then you won’t have anyone to send emails to, no one will read your emails, and you will never get any sales through email, so it is very important to build your email list.

However, you shouldn’t build your email list until you have an email marketing plan. Many people make the mistakes of building a list and then they don’t have a strategic email marketing plan that will allow them to get business from their email marketing.

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Posted by Nadine Mullings | Comments Off | in Blog, Business, Email Marketing, Email Results, Marketing, Marketing for Coaches, Marketing for Consultants

June

23 2015

How to Create a Simple and Effective Email Marketing Plan

If you plan to grow or promote your business online, then email marketing should be an essential part of your marketing activity.

One of the best ways to be successful with your email marketing effort is to create an effective email marketing plan.

Your email marketing plan doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective, in fact, in this post I will walk you through the outline for a simple and effective email marketing plan.

Step 1- Define the purpose of your email marketing campaigns

[Tweet “[Successful Email Marketing Plan] Step 1- Define the purpose of your email marketing campaigns! #MarketingEssentials #EmailMarketing”]

In this part of your plan, you should:

Identify who you are trying to reach (customers, prospects, partners, etc.)
Define why you are trying to reach them (to stay top of mind, to provide education, to create brand awareness, to get sales, etc.)
What are you trying to achieve from reaching this group of people via email?

Step 2- Define your email marketing goals

[Tweet “[Successful Email Marketing Plan] Step 2 – Define your email marketing goals! #MarketingEssentials #EmailMarketing”]

This part of your plan should cover your email marketing goals:

Start by listing your overall goals: more sales, relationship building, stay top of mind, communicate special promotions, get referrals, etc.
Then list the more specific goals you would you like to achieve through email marketing (i.e. get two new clients per month, get three referrals per month, etc.)

Step 3– Select Your Email Marketing Strategy

[Tweet “[Successful Email Marketing Plan] Step 3- Select Your Email Marketing Strategy”]

When it comes to email marketing you have several options on types of email marketing campaigns you can create. Pick the strategies that make sense for your business.

Your strategy could include the following types of email campaigns:

E-Newsletters- An informative e-mail that goes out to your contacts periodically. This could be monthly, bi-weekly, weekly, etc.
Autoresponders– A series of e-mails that automatically go out over a period of time based on someone joining your e-mail list or being added to your email list.
Drip Campaigns– A series of e-mails that automatically go out over a period of time for a specific promotion, or a specific event, etc.

The difference between an autoresponder and a drip campaign is that an autoresponder is a response from an action someone has taken (downloading an eBook, White Paper, Checklist, etc.). While a drip campaign is a series of promotional campaign emails sent to your list not based on an action they have taken, but solely based on a specific promotional campaign.

The most successful email marketing plans have a combination of types of email marketing strategies. The e-newsletters work well to stay top of mind because they are consistently going out over a period of time, but the auto responders and drip campaigns work well too because they are usually tied to a specific product, promotion, or services that you would like to generate some business for, so decide what types of campaigns will work well for you business.

Step 4: Create an Email Marketing Calendar

[Tweet “[Successful Email Marketing Plan] Step 4- Create an Email Marketing Calendar! #MarketingEssentials #EmailMarketing”]

The next step in your email marketing plan is to create a calendar that maps out all of your emails over an extended period of time. The time period could be the next 60 days, 90 days, 6 months or even a year. Your calendar should include the following:

Month/Send Date– What month and date will this specific email be published to your list?
Email Topic– What is this specific email about
Type of Email– Is it a newsletter, or part of a series of emails for an autoresponder or drip campaign.
Email List– Who will this email be sent to (prospect list, customer list, partner list, combination of lists, etc.)

Taking the time to strategically think through your email marketing effort will help you to create successful email marketing campaigns.

Are you currently using email marketing in your business? Do you have an email marketing plan? If you need assistance creating an successful email marketing plan, contact us to schedule your FREE Email Marketing Success Strategy Session.

Posted by Nadine Mullings | Comments Off | in Business, Business Development, Email Marketing, Marketing, Small Business, Uncategorized

June

09 2015

The #1 Reason Businesses Struggle to Get Results from Email Marketing

I recently sent out a survey to my audience, which included the question, “If you are using email marketing in your marketing mix, what do you struggle with the most when it comes to your email marketing?” The responses varied, but the #1 thing that most business owners, coaches, and consultants said they struggle with was staying consistent.

It’s easy to start sending emails to your list, but it’s hard to stay consistent, and only when you are consistent with your email marketing will you get results, so I decided to put some tips together on how you can stay consistent with your email marketing.

Create an email marketing plan– in your email marketing plan you will outline your email marketing goals, types of emails you will be sending (e-newsletter, autoresponders, drip campaigns, etc.), how often you will send your emails, when you will send your emails, your email flow, specific topics, etc.When you have a plan, you are better able to execute and to stay on task with getting your emails out.Many business owners, coaches, and consultants, skip the step of creating the email marketing plan, and then they don’t have anything to refer back to and therefore, they become very inconsistent with their efforts.
Select a specific day and time that you would like your emails to go out– this can be really helpful in staying consistent with sending out your emails. For example, my monthly e-newsletter goes out the second Wednesday of every month, because I know that it goes out the second Wednesday of every month, I plan my activities around that time frame to make sure that the e-newsletter goes out.In addition, after a couple of years of testing days and times, I figured out that on average I get the best open rates on Wednesdays after 3:00 pm, so now I schedule my e-newsletter to go out the second Wednesday of every month at 3:30 pm.Knowing the time and date my email needs to go out, helps me to stay consistent.
Put it on your calendar– if you put your publishing dates on your marketing calendar you will be forced to make sure you get your emails out, because you now have a deadline that you have to send out your emails. If it’s not on your calendar, you will tend to forget to send it out, or because you don’t have a deadline, you will continuously put it off, so place it on your calendar so you can stay consistent.
Plan your topics- included in your email marketing plan should be what topics you plan to write about and promote in your e-newsletter. The information you will be sending in the series of emails for your autoresponders, and/or drip campaigns should also be included in the plan. When you’ve planned out your topics and information, it makes it much easier to create your emails and to stay consistent.

So, if you create an email marketing plan, set a day and time to publish your emails, put it on your calendar, and plan out your topics in advance, these four things can help you to stay consistent with your email marketing.

Do you have an email marketing plan? Do you need help with creating your email marketing plan? We can help, contact us for a FREE email marketing success strategy session.

Posted by Nadine Mullings | Comments Off | in Business, Business Development, Email Marketing, Email Results, Marketing, Marketing for Coaches, Marketing for Consultants, Uncategorized