The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing

Tying Email Content to Your Objectives

Before you create an email, you should set a primary objective that governs your content decisions. This objective helps you set the tone of your email content and helps you avoid mixing messages or targeting the wrong audience. An objective also helps you in giving your audience what they want so you can balance the needs of your audience with the need to push your own agenda.

For example, Constant Contact sends out a monthly email newsletter called Email Hints & Tips. While the email highlights our services and provides a path for referrals, the primary objective for Email Hints & Tips is to educate our customers on email marketing best practices so they can be more successful using our products. Even though we have hundreds of thousands of subscribers who are not yet our customers, we are careful not to insert overwhelming calls to action focused on selling our products or services. Instead, most of the calls to action involve links to full-length articles that are summarized in the newsletter, links to customer support options, and links to tutorials or webinars covering the newsletter’s topics in more detail.

We do this because we know that the noncustomers who subscribe to Email Hints & Tips aren’t interested in signing up for Constant Contact immediately. If they were, they would have signed up to receive information about product features or discounts. We know that more of the noncustomers on the list are going to become customers ...