Email marketing is an effective way to target a specific audience and send personalized messages that promote your brand and drive sales. It also helps you build valued relationships with your customers.
To reach a bigger audience, you need to look into creating SMART goals. Whether you work as a marketer or own a business, you’ll take the necessary action to promote your products or services and increase sales.
What is a SMART Goal?
The SMART goal framework can help you create goals for improving email marketing effectiveness. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.
Let’s dive deeper into each SMART component:
Specific
The more precise your email marketing goals, the higher your chance of reaching them. Ambiguous goals will only make you lose your grasp of success.
To illustrate, say your goal is to increase your email list. While this is a great goal, it isn’t specific enough. How will you go about growing your subscriber list? Why is an email list necessary for you?
Specificity will lead you on the right path to goal completion. You’ll have a clear roadmap to reach your ideal destination.
Measurable
Make sure you have measurements for your goal. In other words, you must be able to track progress regularly. This will allow you to check whether or not you’re veering off course.
If your email marketing goals involve gaining more email subscribers, try making them quantifiable. For instance, “grow your email list size by 50 in one month.” You can monitor progress more efficiently as you have the exact percentage to strive for.
Attainable
When setting goals, try to be as reasonable as possible. Using the previous example, to increase your email list, you can’t expect to do so in half a day. You must have enough resources and commitment to tackle this specific goal.
Relevant
You should ask yourself, “Why am I setting goals for email marketing in the first place?” Perhaps enhancing your email content quality could be a means to increase sales for your company.
Having relevant goals will motivate you to push on, even in times of difficulty. You will have less trouble sparking motivation for you and your team.
Time-Based
Ensure you have a specific end date to keep you responsible. A deadline for your goals will develop a feeling of urgency to make daily progress.
Otherwise, you may give up on the journey to success altogether. That would be a worst-case outcome, so ensure you have a target deadline.
12 SMART Goals Examples for Email Marketing
Below you’ll discover 12 SMART goals examples to improve email marketing:
1. Grow Your Email List
“I want to grow our email list by 200 subscribers for the four months ahead. To do this, I will create an opt-in incentive, update our website content to encourage more sign-ups, and implement email marketing automation tools.”
Specific: You will aim to grow your email list by 200 subscriptions in four months.
Measurable: You could count how many subscribers you gain each month.
Attainable: Gaining 200 subscriptions in four months is an achievable goal.
Relevant: Growing your email list will help you generate more leads and increase sales.
Time-based: There is a four-month deadline for meeting this particular goal.
2. Decrease Unsubscribe Rates
“I will reduce unsubscribe rates by 10% each quarter over the following year and analyze customer feedback to assess why customers are unsubscribing, so we can effectively adjust our strategy to address those issues.”
Specific: This is specific because you aim to have a 10% reduction in the unsubscribe rate.
Measurable: Analyze customer feedback to assess why people are unsubscribing.
Attainable: This goal is feasible if you dedicate resources to consumer feedback.
Relevant: Reducing unsubscribe rates is directly tied to email marketing.
Time-based: The goal includes a one-year timeline for completion.
3. Improve Email Content Quality
“I want to improve the quality of the content in our emails by creating engaging, informative copy that resonates with readers. I will measure success by tracking open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. I aim to increase our email content quality by 15% in 6 months.”
Specific: This goal outlines what must be done to reach it, the timeline, and measurable outcomes.
Measurable: Email content quality can be measured by tracking click-through rates and conversions.
Attainable: Writing better content in your emails is absolutely doable.
Relevant: Improving email content quality will help engage readers and boost conversions.
Time-based: Goal achievement is expected within 6 months.
4. Personalize Emails
“For two months, I will create a personalized email template that includes each customer’s name and other details. This step will help our customers feel recognized and appreciated for their loyalty.”
Specific: The statement is well-defined because it details how you’ll include each customer’s name and other relevant information.
Measurable: You could get customer feedback through surveys to measure success.
Attainable: This is attainable because creating personalized email templates is an achievable task for a marketer.
Relevant: The SMART goal is relevant to building customer loyalty.
Time-bound: You have two months to accomplish this goal.
5. Increase Conversion Rate
“To improve our email marketing performance, I will aim to increase the click-through rate from our emails by 10% by the end of the quarter. This goal will be achieved by optimizing our emails with better design and targeted content.”
Specific: This goal specifies the conversion rate (click-through rate) and how it will be achieved (email optimization).
Measurable: You can measure the click-through rate from emails.
Attainable: Increasing the click-through rate is achievable within the given deadline.
Relevant: Achieving more excellent email marketing performance is relevant to the goal.
Time-based: The goal has a definite timeline for completion (end of the quarter).
6. Automate Email Campaigns
“I want to optimize the process of sending email campaigns. In two months, I plan to have an automated system for segmenting and sending out personalized email campaigns. This should help us reach more people in a shorter time.”
Specific: This goal is explicit because you will create an automated system for segmenting and sending out personalized email campaigns.
Measurable: Make sure the automated system is up and running smoothly.
Attainable: This is feasible with the right resources and strategies.
Relevant: The statement is pertinent to the individual’s plans for reaching more people with automated emails.
Time-based: Goal achievement should be expected in two months.
7. Increase Brand Awareness
“I want to increase the brand awareness of our organization by 20% over the next 9 months. To do this, I’ll create email campaigns with interactive elements, like polls or quizzes. I’ll also collaborate with influencers and create content to be shared on our social media channels.”
Specific: You have a clear action plan: collaborate with influences, share content on social media, and make interactive email campaigns.
Measurable: Measurement could be done by tracking brand mentions and website visits.
Attainable: You must dedicate time and resources to reach this particular goal.
Relevant: This goal is appropriate to the company’s goal of becoming more well-known.
Time-based: You have an end date of 9 months in mind to accomplish this goal.
8. Optimize Send Times
“I will analyze customer data and optimize email send times by the end of three months. This will make sure my emails reach the right people at the right time so that I can increase customer engagement.”
Specific: The goal is clear. The person wants to optimize send times for their email marketing campaigns.
Measurable: The individual will monitor customer engagement for success.
Attainable: The timeline is enough for the marketer to optimize email send times.
Relevant: Email send times are a crucial component of email marketing.
Time-based: You have a three-month timeline to attain this goal.
9. Leverage A/B Testing
“I’ll create and implement A/B testing protocols for all email campaigns for three months. I want to optimize our emails for maximum conversion and engagement among our subscribers. I will also track the results of each test and adjust future strategies accordingly.”
Specific: You have the specific goal of using A/B testing protocols for all email campaigns.
Measurable: Success can be measured by evaluating the results of each test.
Attainable: This is achievable if you’re dedicated to learning and using A/B testing tools.
Relevant: This goal directly relates to the main objective of increasing conversions and engagement.
Time-based: You should expect goal attainment after three months.
10. Track Sales From Emails
“I want to track sales generated from emails sent from our newsletter subscriptions, so I can better understand how effective our email marketing campaigns are in terms of revenue. I’ll set up an email tracking system and measure the results after one month.”
Specific: Use an email tracking system to monitor sales generated by newsletter subscriptions.
Measurable: Track and measure the results of each email sent out to customers and subscribers.
Attainable: This goal is achievable if the right tracking system and analytics tools are used.
Relevant: Tracking sales generated from emails sent out is pertinent for understanding email campaigns’ effectiveness.
Time-based: Expect goal achievement by the end of one month.
11. Monitor Subscriber Activity
“I’ll track subscriber activity for all campaigns, focusing on open rates, click rates, unsubscribe rates, and more by the end of two weeks. I want to better understand how my subscribers interact with messages and what I can do to improve their experience.”
Specific: The statement outlines the marketer’s objective, how to accomplish the goal, and the time frame.
Measurable: Ensure you pay close attention to open, click, and unsubscribe rates.
Attainable: The provided timeline is enough to understand subscriber activity.
Relevant: This goal is suitable for allowing you to enhance subscribers’ activities.
Time-based: There is a two-week deadline for accomplishing this goal.
12. Respond to Customer Feedback
“To ensure our customers receive the best experience possible, I will respond to all customer feedback within 24 hours within two months. I want our customers to know their feedback is appreciated and valued.”
Specific: The individual will respond to customer feedback within 24 hours.
Measurable: Count how much customer feedback is responded to in 24 hours.
Attainable: This is a reachable goal because the individual has allotted enough time to respond to customer feedback.
Relevant: The goal is appropriate because it encourages a better experience for customers.
Time-based: This is time-bound because it has an end date of two months.
Final Thoughts
Developing SMART goals is a powerful tool to improve the effectiveness of email marketing. You can promote sales, special offers, and new products or services. Plus, your relationship with customers will become an amicable one.
Figuring out how to set SMART goals may be daunting, especially for first-time goal-setters. This is where these listed 12 SMART goals examples will be a helping hand.
From improving email content quality to improving brand recognition, you’ll find much-needed inspiration to improve email marketing performance.
