Planning Campaigns

Before you get started using XSellerate, you should spend some time planning your marketing efforts. Effective marketing is not a haphazard affair. It takes careful planning, efficient execution and regular follow‑up. The more effort you put into the planning stages, the higher the payoff in new and repeat business. Keep these items in mind as you design your holistic marketing approach.

1. Plan Your Campaigns — As with any effort, the more thought you put into it before you act, the better result you can expect.
2. Choose a Target Audience — There are several things you should consider when selecting a target audience.
   • Consider the potential impact of the ad you want to send on the audience you select.
   • Keep in mind that you may overlap multiple campaigns to the same target audience. If you overlap too much, you may reduce the effectiveness of your campaign.
3. Choose an Appropriate Message — Keep in mind the ads you send are just as important as the audience you select. For example, today's SPAM — not to be confused with mass email — is largely ineffective in the professional world. While SPAM messages have a broad target audience, the messages are ill‑conceived, laden with typos, and generally unprofessional. The more thought you put into selecting the right messages for your campaigns, the better the result.
4. Consider Appropriate Timing — It's easy to spoil an effective set of marketing campaigns by sending too many ads to any one person in a short period of time. A well thought out delivery schedule for the ads in your "drip campaigns" should balance the importance of your message with consideration for the recipient. No one likes getting too much marketing mail from someone. On another tack, bear in mind that enrolling the same person in multiple campaigns can spoil your timing efforts as well.

Campaign Types

You should also consider what kind of campaign you wish to use in your marketing efforts. Campaigns can be:

• One‑time blasts or mailers — One‑time blasts and mailers aren't truly "campaigns" in the sense that they only occur one time, but even if your objective is to simply announce a change in your business, XSellerate can help you achieve it.
• Drip or multi‑contact blasts or mailers — Drip campaigns help you coordinate a series of messages that you stagger out over the course of a certain time period. They can help you balance a lot of information spread out across numerous ads with appropriate timing for maximum effectiveness. Examples of drip campaigns include ongoing newsletters, blog subscriptions, and piecemeal ads where each builds on the next. Drip campaigns can even be a blend of email messages and postcards if you want to maximize both the exposure to your marketing efforts and the impact of each ad.