The reason I like this kind of planning is that it keeps the creator engaged in what they’re doing, which in turn keeps the recipients engaged.  This post is along the same lines again with another way to keep yourself engaged in the email marketing you’re carrying out.

If you haven’t got a dedicated email marketing employee in your business you may find that email marketing is still a bit of a side thought.  The structure will remain the same for a long time until it is blatantly obvious that it isn’t performing how it used to and then a big overhaul ensues.

By this point though, many subscribers have switched off and the effectiveness of your campaign has weakened.

So to combat disengagement from both the subscriber and from yourself, try adopting campaign life cycles.

By email campaign life cycles, I mean have clearly set out dates for the campaign to start and finish.  This can mean a certain theme, a layout strategy, content additions or anything else you think you can alter and see if it affects the success of your campaign.  Once the cycle has finished, move onto another theme or concept and run with that for a set time. 

Having this set period of time for your campaign to run in a certain format will not only keep you thinking of fresh ideas but also will have you looking onto the next idea and concept.  You’ll be taking more attention of what competitors are doing or how the emails you’re subscribed to are being created.

I believe that keeping your campaigns consistently fresh and never resting on a certain format for too long can play a large part in maintaining subscriber engagement levels.

It will also allow you to also test out different strategies on your subscribers.  Take into account which ideas worked and note them for future reference and then adapt the successful ones in your future campaign.

In doing this you are moving away from the reactionary approach to email marketing that would be commonplace in most campaigns that wait until they’re falling behind competitors until they start changing their campaigns.  With the results that can be collected, you won’t need to take inspiration from competitors but will be able to evolve your own findings further.