By Amanda DiSilvestro

Developing an effective email marketing strategy helps you build deeper customer connections, promote your brand and increase your bottom line. Whether you're running a small business or fortune 500,  email remains one of the most important ways to communicate with your customers.

When developing an email marketing strategy, there are campaign planning best practices to keep in mind. According to the experts at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, a number of marketers are still sending bulk emails to their lists without properly segmenting their audiences. This is a sign of a larger issue: many marketers may not truly understand all the best practices for creating email marketing campaigns. Email marketing is a top priority for companies, so it's important to know how to build an effective campaign strategy.

So when building your next email marketing strategy, consider these 10 important steps before launching your next campaign.

1. Create a clear goal
2. Segment your audience
3. Create a compelling headline
4. Pay attention to timing
5. Optimise for your brand
6. Focus on design and compatibility
7. Create a clear call to action
8. Create an effective landing page
9. Set up tracking
10. Test, test, and test again

Create a Clear Goal for your Email Campaign

The first thing to do before launching an email campaign is to decide what the goal will be. What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish? Is email the best way to achieve it? So I have the right email marketing tool? Once you answer these questions you can build a strong email strategy.

Establish Your Email List

When you first build your email list, you must have permission to send an email to your customers and subscribers. Initially, there are many ways to get people on your list, you can offer a discount on a first purchase, advertise your newsletter subscription, offer a free eBooks but in any scenario, you need to be sure you have a strong call to action (CTA).

According to Kissmetrics, you should ask the following questions. Place yourself in the shoes of your prospective customers so you can create something appealing to get those addresses:

• Why should I give you my email address?
• What is the benefit?
• Is this going to be a bunch of spam?
• How frequent are the emails?
• Will I get discounts?
• Will you send me relevant offers or junk?

Being able to answer these specific questions will be the key to getting subscribers. Simply asking for someone's email is not enough.

Once you establish your email list, create properly segmented campaigns, and personalise user experience, it is time to construct the email for your campaign. Here are some important things to remember when creating targeted emails:

Subject line tips

You want to keep your content fresh. While people may be very interested in the beginning, you need to keep them interested over time. If the reader can't tell what the email is about from the subject line, they may not open it.

Keep your subject line to 40 characters. People want to know what your email is about before they open it, but they want to get it in a concise, effective format.

Use promotional emails effectively: You do not want to overwhelm your email list, but you want every email you send to be used effectively. For example, you can promote contests and giveaways in your campaigns in order to reconnect with inactive subscribers, or send subscribers a poll or survey to find out what type of content they're most interested in.

Responsive Design

Another important feature of effective email marketing is responsive design. Email marketing campaigns should always consider mobile devices. Responsive design, and design in general, is a big topic, so check out this guide and infographic for building a responsive email design in your next marketing campaign.

After you launch your email marketing campaign, use the fresh, incoming data to help create more successful campaigns in the future. Check the reports both standard and those you customise to your needs to analyse these numbers.

Opens

How many people opened your email? If this rate is low you need to revise your plan to get through people's spam filters. Try adjusting your subject line. Your open rate is critical: only when the recipient opens your email will they ultimately be able to follow the CTA of your campaign.

Bounces

There are two kinds of bounces: Hard bounces are when the email is no longer active or is in some way invalid. For example, someone may have changed their email, or the email was not recorded accurately and doesn't exist. Soft bounces happen when someone's email box may be full temporarily, or something else prevents the email from getting through. To combat bounces, include a short paragraph on each of your emails letting customers know that if they change their email address, they should let you know so you can update your contact list. You also want to make sure you record emails accurately in the first place.

CTR

Your click-through rate (CTR) shows the percentage of people who received your email and followed through with the call to action you suggested. This metric can provide valuable insights for reformatting and planning future campaigns. You can also compare email campaigns to see if one did better than another.

Lead Generation

The data you receive from each campaign can help you with future lead generation. Figure out and gauge the success of how users have segmented themselves and personalised their experiences. This information can help you launch forward with future campaigns.

Of course, there are many more ways to get more advanced with email marketing. The steps and information in this article are meant to give you a good foundation to build on. As you grow your email marketing, you'll figure things out and learn what best practices work for your audience and which metrics are most important for your company's bottom line.