Most companies approach email marketing with the question "so what could we send?" Yet the right order is the opposite. First you decide what you want your emails to achieve and who you are sending them to, and only then do you look for content. This one reversed step separates a mailing people open from a mailing they delete. In this lesson you will set your goal and divide your contacts into groups you will work with for the rest of the course.

Goal first, content second

You can expect several different things from email marketing, and each looks different in practice. Sales means you want people to buy or send an inquiry after reading your email. Building a reputation means you want to be seen as someone who knows their field. Informing means you need to tell customers something practical in time, such as a change in opening hours or the date of a service inspection.

Most companies want all three, and that is fine. The problem starts when they never name it. The result is a mailing that is supposed to look salesy, friendly and expert all at once, and in the end does nothing properly. So write down one sentence: "We want our emails to do this." It will guide every decision whenever you are not sure whether to send a particular email.

Who the right people are

The days of sending everything to everyone are long gone. Each of us gets so many messages every day that we scan the inbox at a glance, delete what does not matter and open only what brings us something in that moment. If you send people content they are not interested in, there is very little chance they will ever get to it.

So divide your contacts into groups based on what you will send them. The basic split is usually prospects versus existing customers, because those two groups care about completely different things. You can then divide existing customers further, for example by what they bought from you, what stage of the relationship they are in or which other product makes sense to offer them. You can create as many groups as you like. Experience shows, however, that splitting contacts into very small groups is hard to put to use, because you cannot produce that many different emails.

What you already know about your audience

Before you start collecting new data, go through what you already have. There is usually a surprising amount of it. An airline knows from a single purchase how many people are flying, where and whether there are children among them. A car dealership has the sale date, the vehicle type, the service history and the end of financing in its system. A real estate agent knows whether a client was selling or buying and in which location.

Every piece of data like this is also a guide to what to send that person. Travelers with children will appreciate check-in information more than another flight offer. The owner of a three-year-old car will appreciate a service reminder more than a promotion on a new model. Data sitting idle in your system is the cheapest source of relevant content you have.

The spreadsheet you will work with

Open a simple spreadsheet. In the first column, write the names of the groups you divided your contacts into. Do not fill in anything else yet, the weeks will go into the next columns in the following lesson. But you already have a foundation that will show you whether some group has gone without communication for a long time and whether, on the other hand, you are sending the same thing to another group twice.

The most common question in email marketing is: how often should I send? The answer is that there is no exact rule, but there are two mistakes you can avoid. The first is sending too often, the second is sending too rarely. Both cost you the same thing, lost attention. In this lesson you will find your own frequency and build the spreadsheet from the previous lesson into a plan covering the next twelve weeks.

How often to send

For most companies, one or two emails every two weeks per contact group works well. But there are industries where even that is too much. A real estate agent or a car dealer can get by with six to ten emails a year, as long as they are well targeted and bring value. That is less than one email a month, and yet it is enough for a client to remember you at the right moment.

Many senders are afraid of being annoying. In reality, the opposite scenario is far more common. People do not unsubscribe in droves, they simply forget about you. Quietly disappearing off the radar is a bigger threat than the occasional unsubscribe, because you get no signal about it. You have to test the right frequency yourself, and you will recognize it when your unsubscribe count is not growing and your open rate stays stable at the same time.

A twelve-week plan

Go back to the spreadsheet from the previous lesson. The first column holds your contact groups. Now write week numbers into the next columns, at least twelve of them, that is three months ahead. Then, in each cell, briefly note what you will send to which group in that week.

A plan built this way does three things at once. It shows you whether your communication is spread out evenly or piling up into a single week. It reveals groups you have forgotten about. And above all, it tells you in advance what content you are missing, so you can prepare it calmly instead of at the eleventh hour.

Do not forget that sales emails belong in the plan too. They are not intruders, they are part of it. We will look at the ratio of useful to sales content in detail in lesson four.

A yearly skeleton and seasonal opportunities

Alongside the quarterly plan, it pays to make a rough overview for the whole year. It does not have to be detailed, a list of opportunities you know about in advance is enough. The seasonal peaks of your industry, trade fairs and events, holidays, the end of the year, customer anniversaries, contract and subscription renewals. For each one, note when to start preparing.

The yearly skeleton saves you from the situation where you realize in November that the Christmas campaign should have been created in September. It also shows the empty slots where you can fit content that has no fixed date.

A sending routine

A plan only works when there is a routine behind it. Block out a fixed time in your calendar for writing, even just two hours once every two weeks, and do not move it. If there are more people on your team, divide the topics among them so the writing does not depend on one person. And prepare a template to build your emails in, so you do not spend time on design every single time.

Consistency matters more in email marketing than perfection. An average email sent according to plan does more work than a great email that never got written.

The plan is done, the cells in the spreadsheet are empty, and the moment of truth arrives: what do you actually write in there? Most companies get stuck at this point because they look for content in their company news. But you do not have news every two weeks. The good news is that news is far from the only or the best material. In this lesson we will go through sources of ideas that are always available to you.

Start with customer questions

The most reliable source of topics sits in your inbox and on your phone. What do people regularly ask you before buying? What do you have to explain every time? What do many customers get wrong and then come back with a complaint? Every question like this is a ready-made email topic, because you know for sure that more people have it on their mind than the one person who asked out loud.

Also ask your salespeople and support staff. They hear customers' real wording, and those phrases can be used directly as email subject lines.

Useful content the reader keeps

Take the example of an airline. It knows many weeks in advance that small children will be flying with you. Instead of another email with discounted flights, it can send you tips on how to check in comfortably with kids, where to leave the stroller or where to find the bus between terminals at your connecting airport. You will not delete an email like that. You might even forward it to the friends flying with you.

This principle works in every industry. A car repair shop can advise how to tell it is time to change your tires. A real estate agent can explain what is currently happening with prices in a specific location. An accounting firm can remind clients of upcoming deadlines. What they have in common is that the recipient gets value from the email even when they have no intention of buying anything right now.

The big advantage of this content is its durability. Tips for traveling with children interest every family that will ever fly. Once you prepare them, they will serve for many years and many more people. All it takes is an occasional update.

Ideas you can rely on

When you run out of inspiration, go through this list. Every item can be used again and again with different content:

• A how-to or a tip on doing something better, faster or cheaper.
• An answer to a frequent question, even an uncomfortable one.
• A customer story, that is, what the situation looked like before working with you and after.
• A behind-the-scenes look, introducing a team member or showing how something is made.
• A seasonal reminder tied to the yearly skeleton from the previous lesson.
• A message based on the data you have about the customer, such as a purchase anniversary or an upcoming inspection date.
• A question for your readers, a short questionnaire or a request for feedback.
• A roundup of the most interesting things in your industry over the past month.

Speak the language of the group you are writing to

The same topic can be written several ways, and it is the group that decides, not the product. You can describe plain cottage cheese to people who work out as a source of protein, and to parents as a quick and cheap snack. The result is a completely different email with the same content inside.

The same goes for the subject line. "Visit our dance class" is a description. "Come on over, there will be dancing" is an invitation. The first one informs, the second sparks curiosity. One well-written piece will often fill several cells in your plan at once, you just present it to each group in its own language.

The question every plan runs into sooner or later: should we sell or not sell? The answer is both, but in a certain order and ratio. A sales email only works when it has something to draw on, and that something is the attention you built beforehand with useful messages. In this lesson we will show how to combine both roles so they do not get in each other's way.

Why promotions and discounts alone stop working

Try going through your own inbox. Emails that are nothing but advertising are usually the first to go in the trash. Even the best discount will not convince you if it is for a product you do not need. A discount on something you just bought fares even worse.

You know this from experience too. You buy something for the garden from an online store and then get offers for kitchen knives, because the store sells those as well. Or you buy a plane ticket and from that moment on you get the same email every week with different graphics and a different European capital. When a mailing turns into permanent product advertising, you stop caring and unsubscribe.

Attention is the currency you pay for sales with

That is exactly why non-sales content has a hard business role in the plan. It maintains the attention you will need at the moment you actually offer something. When people regularly get messages from you that brought them something, they will open the one containing your offer too. They may not take it, but they will read it, because useful things come from you.

That is precisely the point of the combination in the plan. Useful content makes your emails something people can count on, sales emails turn that into business. Neither one is enough on its own in the long run.

How to set the ratio

A simple rule to start with: for every sales email, prepare at least two that benefit the recipient even without a purchase. Then adjust the ratio based on your audience and what you see in the statistics.

When planning, stick to three principles:

• Put sales emails into the plan in advance, not based on how the month is going.
• Never send two sales emails in a row to the same group with nothing in between.
• If you have been silent for a long time, do not start with an offer. Reintroduce yourself with something useful first.

Sell in a way that does not feel like advertising

Even a sales email can be written in two ways. You can describe features, or a situation the customer recognizes. There is a difference between "our glasses will look great on you" and "glasses don't have to be rose-tinted for you to see beautifully". Both sell glasses, but the second sentence lets readers imagine for themselves what is in it for them.

It also helps to sell at a moment that makes sense from the recipient's point of view. A car buyback offer carries completely different weight when it arrives at the time people typically start thinking about replacing their car. A service inspection reminder does not feel like advertising but like a service, because it came when you needed it.

Trust decides who gets the call

In most industries, customers do not choose based on the quality of the work alone. They choose based on who they know and who they associate with the topic. The one who writes regularly and clearly stays in people's minds far better than the one who last got in touch when the contract was signed. And where there is trust, there is business.

A plan that does not change for a year is just a wish list. Only when you regularly look at what worked does the plan start becoming a tool. Evaluating a strategy is different from evaluating a single campaign. With a campaign you care about one subject line and one topic, with a plan you care about the trend across months. In this lesson you will set up a rhythm for adjusting your plan.

What to track for the plan, not for a single email

Individual campaign numbers are the raw material. The questions a strategy asks are a bit bigger:

• Is your open rate growing, stagnating or declining across months? A short-term swing means nothing, a six-month trend does.
• Which content types get the highest clicks? The answer tells you what to include in the plan more often.
• How many people unsubscribe and when? A rise in unsubscribes after sales emails means your ratio or targeting is off.
• How are the size and activity of your database developing? A database that is not growing is shrinking on its own.
• Are all the groups in your spreadsheet getting communication? A group you have not written to in three months is a lost opportunity.

Treat open rate as a rough trend. Because of privacy protection in email clients it is less and less accurate, so base your decisions mainly on clicks and on what happened after them.

A rhythm that works

The day after each campaign, look at the basic numbers and the list of undelivered emails. Fix incorrect addresses, remove nonexistent ones.

Once a month, compare campaigns against each other. Which topics and subject lines worked, which group performed best, where unsubscribes went up. Write your conclusions into the same spreadsheet that holds your plan, even just one sentence next to the given week.

Once a quarter, build the plan for the next twelve weeks. This is the moment when lessons learned turn into practice. Drop the content types that consistently interest no one, add the ones that worked, and check the yearly skeleton to see whether an opportunity is approaching that you need to start preparing content for.

Ask people directly

Statistics show you what happened, but not why. The only way to find that out is to ask. Every once in a while, send a short questionnaire asking what topics your readers would be interested in and whether the frequency feels right. A few questions are enough, people will not finish a longer questionnaire.

Feedback has one more benefit. When you ask your customers regularly, you get to know your clientele better, and you can then target not only your emails but also your offer more precisely.

Test instead of guessing

When you are torn between two subject lines, test them. Quanda has a dedicated campaign type for this purpose, A/B testing. Stick to two rules: test one thing at a time and on a large enough sample, otherwise you are measuring chance. And write your results down, because the point is not to win one test but to gradually learn what works on your audience.

The plan is a living document

After a year of working with the spreadsheet, you will have something more valuable than any generic guide from the internet. You will have your own overview of what your people read, when they respond and what leaves them cold. So open the spreadsheet, fill in the next quarter and schedule your first evaluation date. A strategy starts working the moment it has a date.