Without a good foundation and a strong plan, your program will fall apart no matter how hard you try. One of the key components to a strong foundation is building a sound contact plan.

When building your contact plan, think strategically before you begin. Ask yourself: Who are you customers and what do they value? How can email support this? And what makes this channel unique from my other online and offline touchpoints? Then think about how your customers buy. What does their consideration cycle look like? What information do they need along the way to make decisions and ultimately act?

Once you’ve answered these questions. you can start constructing your plan.
 

Components of a contact plan may include:

Promotional Calendar. Depending on your business, a promotional
calendar may be one of the key drivers to your contact plan. The times
when you should promote different products and services will be driven
by this calendar and your overall goals and objectives. This should be
the backbone to your plan. From there you want to think of the customer
lifecycle and where people are within it.

Welcome. A welcome email should come immediately after sign-up.
It’s important to capitalize on a user’s attention, and there is no
better time to do that than the present. Your welcome email should
thank users for opting in, explain what they can expect from your email
program and get them excited to receive the next one. Some advertisers
find that asking additional profile questions during this time is
helpful — “tell us about yourself,” etc. This is something you should
test to determine its viability in your program.

Cultivation. Once you’ve welcomed a user into your program, it’s
time to start cultivating the relationship. During this time you may
find that increased frequency makes sense as new users are usually the
most receptive to your messages. You can also encourage conversion
during this time.

Active Communications. Once someone is through the cultivation
period they fall into the realm of active communications. This is where
you can execute all of the email best practices that you know so well
— including personalization, segmentation, customization, and so on.
The key is to keep track of users’ interactions with your messages so
that you know if someone should fall out of the standard messaging
stream.

Lapsed. A specific plan of contact for lapsed users is also an
important part of any program you construct. There are the obvious
lapsers, those who have not purchased from you in some time; but there
is another group of lapsers — those who have not interacted with your
communications in a defined period of time. It’s important to develop
specific plans to reengage both users in your messages, your brand, and
ultimately the purchase process again.

Relationship Builders/Loyalty. Specific communications to your
best customers are critical, as these folks can be your best advocates
and word-of-mouth salespeople. Thank them for their patronage at
certain times in their lifecycle and/or when they hit specific
milestones with your company.

Once you’ve constructed your contact plan, think about how creative,
personalization, segmentation and testing will support this. How will
creative support your strategies while reinforcing the brand, voice and
personality? How can you track your strategy to prove its viability or
lack thereof? Most important, what is the overall customer experience
going to be, and is this consistent with your goals and objectives?

Source: MediaPost’s Email Insider