I'm sure many of you have been in this position: you craft a beautiful, logical, well thought through email which is due to be sent to a large stakeholder list. Then you hit send. After a few seconds you experience that moment we all dread - "did I forgot to attach the file?", or worse still, "did I forget to delete the sensitive information in the mails below which I've now forwarded!?"

As you can see, that's the best (and worst) thing about email - it's easy, it's efficient, it's scalable and of course it's instantaneous. But situations mentioned above explains why we all (should) think very carefully about why we send volume emails, to whom we send it, what it's supposed to say and what the outcome is that we wish to have. Email marketing is no different. The key to achieving these goals, and getting the most out of email marketing within Sage CRM, is to focus on building an email marketing programme.

Begin with formulating an email marketing strategy according to company goals with measurable KPIs. In order to send relevant, desirable content to customers and prospects, you should then establish rules for segmenting your list. The next step is to focus on your design and layout, ensuring each section of your mail conforms to best-practice and makes its way into the recipient's mailbox. After this stage, you will consider ways to grow and manage your list, refining it to ensure you spend your resources on the right targets, and reduce the attrition rate. As time goes on, and you become more confident and experienced with email marketing, there will be an opportunity to increase campaign ROI by introducing automation. The final process will be to analyse your campaign results, and make the necessary changes to ensure your email marketing programme is meeting your company goals.

Over a series of posts, I will be covering the stages of an email marketing programme.  I hope this will give you guidance on best-practice & get the most out of email marketing within Sage CRM.