What exactly does an “e-blast” mean? You probably hear about them all the time from your advertising reps, maybe even from other colleagues in the marketing world. In my world, an “e-blast” is akin to hitting customers in one target zip code with an un-targeted ad on the radio. The waste is high, the message may not be received by the target audience, and you probably spent top dollar on producing the ad and buying space on the media vehicle.

Now, you may be asking yourself, “How do I avoid that? I definitely don’t want to market to my customers like that.”

Once you’ve built an opt-in list of customers to market to by email, it’s simple: plan, target, send.

Plan

The first question is what kind of content or information do you want to communicate? With what frequency will it be sent? Make the communication strategic, or you may end up asking yourself, “What was the point again?”

One thing to consider is a customer’s inbox is theirs — it’s private, and has a large impact on their daily activities and lives. By giving you their email address, they are trusting that you won’t abuse it, and that they’ll get something valuable out of it. So make sure you give them something they actually want, not just what you think they should want.

Value has several different definitions, depending on your products/services, your customer, and the promise made when the user signed up. You’ll want your communication to be more than just an advertisement — give them information they can use to be a better informed consumer, sell your service to the boss or learn more about your organization.

Target

The beauty of email marketing lies in the ability to segment by as many variables as you care to. Zip codes. Product or service categories of interest. Social networks. Blog readers. Those who have only purchased or donated once.

There are dozens of ways you can slice and dice your list, but think about your overall marketing goals:

• Do you want to increase repeat purchases?
• Get more activity from customers in a particular geographic area?
• Do you want more customers to consider your industry knowledge an important source of information?
• Increase donation amounts from donors who historically make only low donations?

All of these goals would lead to different ways to segment and sort your email database, but you have to know what your goals are before you can intelligently speak to them, and get results from your efforts.

Send

Hitting “send” on your email after targeting your message should be far from the last thing you do. Email marketing tools offer a wealth of data to help you keep track of how often and to what extent people are engaging with your emails. Establish a set frequency and always give the customer what they want and expect, and your audience should respond to your messages. Don’t feel afraid to tweak things over time to get better results.

You should be paying attention to the open percent trends, spam reports and the areas of your email garnering the most attention back to the content you specified. Learn what people respond to, and then model your content accordingly.

In end, just remember to always plan, target, and send when creating email marketing communications programs. By avoiding the hammer strategy, your program can be strategic and focused, making the best value for your marketing budget and your audience.