Over the years, email outreach has proven to be one of the most effective online promotion strategies. And that is why I always include Email Marketing or outreach strategy in all my online adventures; including my online businesses and ministration. Many online ministers or evangelists never employ email outreach in their online ministration strategy.
And the few that do, underemploy the power of email outreach, basically because they lack effective email outreach strategy. So in this post I’ll be sharing an effective email outreach strategy, any online minister can employ for greater impact.
The Effective Email Outreach Strategy
Listed below are five powerful steps for developing an Effective Email Outreach Strategy:
- Sign Up An Account With An Email Marketing Service Provider: The first step to developing an email outreach strategy begins with signing up an account with an email marketing service provider. Example of such email marketing service providers include: Mailchimp, Getresponse, Aweber, Constant Contant, Sendgrid, e.t.c…
As you sign up an account with any of these email marketing services, they will provide you with all the tools you need to implement your email outreach strategy effectively. They provide you with optin forms, autoresponders, email list management tools, reporting tools, list segmentation tools, landing page creation tool, e.t.c. - Build an Email List: Once you get done signing up with an email marketing service provider, the very next thing you need to do is to quickly start building your email list. Building an email list simply means, strategically collecting your target audience’s data – Majorly, Email Address and Name – for continual outreach.
To build an email list, you create an optin form from your email marketing service provider, and integrate it into your online ministry’s platform. Your ministry platform here can be either a full featured website or blog. You can integrate your email optin form anywhere in your platform. You can also integrate the form with a pop up, slidein, overlay or message bar. To get people to sign up, you ask them to subscribe to your newsletter or give them a free gift, such as free e-book. - Send Outreaches Regularly to Your Subscribers: As you get subscribers to your email list, you begin to send email outreaches to them on regular basis. Your outreaches can include new blog posts, church announcements, book release and order info, church events, prayers and prayer guidelines, e.t.c…
Then if there are messages you want every new subscriber to your email list to have access to, you can commit them to an autoresponder campaign in your email marketing service platform. - Segment Your Email List For Better Impact: Segmentation in email marketing or outreach, simply means separating your email subscribers into different categories. For better impact of your email outreaches you need to segment your email list.
To be able to segment your email list effectively, you should create different optin forms, targeted at different categories of audience. For instance, you can have an optin form targeted at youths, while you have another one targeted at adults. - Measure The Results of Your Email Outreaches: As you send your email outreaches, always measure your result. The major ways to measure the impact of your email outreaches are: the opening rate and the link click through rate.
If your email opening rate is low, then you need to work on your email subject lines to ensure it intrigues your readers enough to open it. Then if the click through rate is low, you should work on your contents and call to action.
What is your opinion about the above email outreach strategy? Do you have something to add to the list for better impact? You can share it at the comment section below.
