Crafting a Powerful Email Strategy
Whether you’re developing your first email strategy or looking to refine an existing one, Activity Stream’s Content X Audiences framework offers a practical approach to guide your analysis and set up a results-driven strategy.
Step 1: Map Out Your Content and Audiences
The Content X Audiences methodology is built on a four-dimensional mapping system:
- Your main content areas
- Your main audience segments
- The size of each audience for each content group
- The revenue contribution of each audience for each content group
Define Your Content Areas
Start by outlining your primary content categories. For example:
- Concert venues might categorize content by genre (e.g., classical, rock, pop).
- Performing arts centers could focus on different types of performances (e.g., theater, ballet).
- Sports clubs may include match types, ticket sales, and merchandise.
Identify Your Audiences
Segment your audience based on loyalty, demographics, or purchasing behavior. It’s important to note that customers may belong to multiple audience groups.
For example, a single customer could be both a loyal attendee of classical concerts and an occasional buyer of comedy show tickets.
Measure Audience Size and Contribution
Next, assess the size of each audience and its contribution to your revenue. Visualize this by mapping your audiences against content categories and color-coding based on revenue generation. This will help highlight key audience/content combinations that drive the most value for your business.
Here’s an example of how this mapping might look for a multi-purpose venue:
Step 2: Define Your Email Campaign Structure
Once your mapping is complete, you can identify high-impact content-audience combinations. These will guide the structure of your email campaigns, helping you define the right audience, frequency, and content focus for each email.
For instance, based on the example above, you might choose to implement the following strategy:
- Classical Newsletter: Targeted to classical music fans.
- Non-Classical Newsletter: Focused on pop, musicals, comedy, and rock, with new events highlighted.
- Genre-Specific Newsletters: Monthly updates for pop, musicals, comedy, and rock enthusiasts.
- Weekly Event Roundup: Highlighting upcoming events for the week, focused on pop, musical, and rock genres.
- Group Booker Newsletter: Tailored to group bookers, featuring primarily family and musical shows.
- Concert Alerts: Triggered emails for fans when new events are announced, based on past ticket purchases for similar artists.
In this example, students play a significant role in the venue’s audience. Rather than creating a dedicated student newsletter, it might be more effective to include student discounts in relevant emails. However, you could experiment with a standalone student-focused campaign down the line.
Once your audience and content groups are set, the next step is to create an Email Campaign Calendar to manage the frequency and timing of these communications.
Step 3: Execute, Measure, Learn
With your campaign structure in place, launch your emails and track performance across key metrics: opens, clicks, conversions, and unsubscribes. Group similar campaigns together for more consistent evaluation.
After 8-12 weeks, review the performance of each email type. Based on the results, refine your strategy to improve effectiveness.
Elevate Your Email Strategy
By leveraging Activity Stream’s Content X Audiences framework, you can build a more tailored, data-driven email strategy that aligns your content with your audience’s preferences. This structured approach helps ensure that each campaign delivers meaningful, revenue-generating results while giving you the flexibility to refine and evolve over time. With regular evaluation and adjustment, your email strategy will continue to drive success.
