Do a good job in monthly EDM marketing planning and improve the efficiency of email marketing in just three steps

Email promotion has become one of the most important promotion methods for cross-border e-commerce. According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) report, 77.6% of content operators believe that EDM is the most commonly used method to reach users, while 64% of SMEs will use email to send marketing content to consumers, and as high as 35% Marketers send out 3-5 promotional emails to their customers per week, which can be seen to infiltrate promotional programs in all walks of life. At the same time, in order to successfully achieve good results in EDM marketing, marketers need to invest a certain amount of time and energy to polish the content, which is often considered the most troublesome aspect of all. After all, operators often have to take care of multiple channels for promotion and do not have enough time to do so. Hence, if you have the same confusion, then following the three tips below can help you greatly improve the efficiency of EDM marketing. Come and study EDM promotion with us! 

Build a user life system

The first step to achieve a good EDM effect is to find the right target group. Combined with the life cycle of your website consumers, push the content of interest to the corresponding users, which can get twice the result with half the effort. At the same time, when sorting out the customer life cycle of your website, you will gradually discover your EDM strategy promotion goals to help you plan the overall plan more clearly.

Generally speaking, the user life cycle is divided into five stages: introduction period, growth period, maturity period, sleep period, and loss period, and the corresponding operation strategy has four stages: create new, generate conversion, repurchase growth, and recall. Each stage corresponds to different email marketing target groups and marketing methods.

Step1. Pull new period

The focus of this stage is to accumulate new subscribers‘ mailboxes, collect user data through various channels, improve user portraits, and prepare for the next stage of refined user stratification. After the label data is perfected, refined email pushes can be performed. At the same time, for users in the introduction period of new subscriptions, it is suitable to send marketing emails related to ‘subscription welcome messages’, ‘announce first-order discounts’, ‘new subscribers’ benefits’, and etc. to promote first-order transactions and help increase product popularity.

Step2. Growth period

This stage focuses on improving the retention of new users and promoting the conversion of growing users. Merchants should focus more on improving shopping experience and product experience for new customers, improving users' in-depth interaction with the website, and promoting the conversion of second and third orders. At this time, users should have a certain good impression of the website. Combined with the marketing calendar, we regularly send e-commerce discounts (Double Eleven (11/11), Double Twelve (12/12), Black Friday, etc.) and holiday marketing (Mother's Day, Halloween, Christmas, etc.) to grow users. Merchants should consider weekend discounts and other marketing emails to increase the activity of growing users as well.

Step3. Maturity

After user’s have done three or more purchases on the website, they will enter the mature stage. At this time, the focus is on enhancing the further interaction of these mature users to the website, so that they form the habit of using the products on the platform, thereby increasing the repurchase rate. At the same time, mature users can also help attract new users to visit the website through sharing and fission, and enhance growth in the ‘new user’ pool. For mature users, you may design some personalized email content and carry out refined email push, such as recommending similar products according to purchased products, reminding replenishment according to the consumption level of purchased products, weekly hot selling list, wish lists, and even member referral rewards and other contents that allow mature users to be more invested in participating in the growth of the website.

Step4. Sleep/ Loss period

In the face of users in the sleep period and loss period, on the premise of not disturbing users, use innovative methods to activate users through various channels to wake users' sleep state, and restore loss. At this stage, you can cooperate with the issuance of user questionnaires, re-login incentive rights, and limited time purchases. You may consider including exclusive offers and other content to re-attract stray users.

Email promotion rhythm and content planning

After clarifying the promotion goals of EDM, you may start planning the monthly EDM promotion rhythm one month in advance. In the planning, information such as the sending date, sending subject and content, sending group and list, content production source, and the person in charge of this period of promotion should be reflected, then deliver the content once produced as planned. Below are some table examples to meet common email marketing scenarios.

If a merchant has accumulated more users and has hierarchical management of users, the email content can be designed according to users at different stages.

Stages	Group characteristics	User behavior characteristics	Pushable email types
Lead-in period	New users	New registration, new subscription	Newcomers welcome message, first order discount, regular newsletters
Growth period	Active users	Have opened/clicked on the email and made at least one purchase	All categories of emails, such as holiday marketing, website promotions, limited-time offers, surveys, etc.
Maturity period	Local users	Have opened/clicked on emails and made at least three purchases	All categories of emails, appropriately add VIP exclusive discounts, personalized recommendation emails based on browsing, shopping cart add-on purchases, favorites, etc.
Sleep period	Non-active users	Have opened/clicked on emails, but did not place an order, and did not visit the website in the past 30 days	Notification emails, such as account update, security reminder, password update, birthday email, care email
Loss period	Lost users	No emails opened/clicked, no orders placed; or have not opened any emails nor visited in the last 180 days	Send recall emails regularly

Regardless of the stage, it is recommended to send EDM at least once a week and three times a month. You can refer to the following sample monthly promotion planning table:

Sending Time	Purpose of email	Email Subjects	Contents	Group to send	Content creator (names are for reference purposes only)
2022.4.1 6pm(GMT+8)	Encourage to create order	Weekend promotion!	Main Poster + Top 10 Best Selling Products + Limited Time Discount Code	All subscribed users	John
2022.4.13 10am(GMT+8)	Increase user activity	New Products Recommendation	Video + 5 main new products + 5 low-priced products	Users who have opened mail in the past 90 days	Jane
2022.4.25 10am(GMT+8)	Establish brand image and increase user interaction	Exclusive membership day	Member Day Main Poster + Member benefits + Page Hyperlink	All subscribed members	John

Making good use of the monthly content planning sheet to prepare for promotions in advance can help you work efficiently.

Enhance the division of daily output

After setting up your store's monthly EDM promotion plan, according to the planned content, start the preparatory work before sending the email in advance. The pre-preparation mainly revolves around the mailing list, email template, and test email confirmation.

Email list: Due to the characteristics of EDM promotion, you need to have a subscription list in order to conduct email promotion. According to the characteristics of your promotion list in each issue, label the corresponding mailboxes in advance, and import them into the mailing system to generate corresponding target mailing groups, record the behavior of each group, and continuously optimize the list.

Email template: Choose an email template that matches your promotion theme, start preparing products in advance, make promotional posters, jump links on landing pages, call to action and other materials, and pay attention to whether the layout of the email is suitable for the mobile terminal. Good content can improve readers. The desire to click.

Test email: After making the email template, and formulating the email label, sender's name and email address, before sending it formally, you need to send a test email to the operator's gmail, yahoo, hotmail and other email addresses for layout confirmation. If there is a discrepancy in the typesetting displayed in the mailbox, adjustments should be made in time.