One would assume that the SMART acronym for target setting is well enough known to not bear repeating. So do you go through all five stages each time? The answer is probably not. Why should you be different?

The most difficult of the five for those engaged in email marketing is probably the R, variously deciphered as: realistic, relevant, reasonable and results-oriented. All worthy goals. But it can be difficult to work out what is realistic, etc, with a target such as an increase in subscribers to your email lists.

The suggestion is that online sales will take a bit of a boost when the rise to 20% VAT starts to hurt. And this will be fairly soon. So one would assume that more people would be naturally gravitating towards subscribing. This might well make it difficult to keep the increase down to your target of, say, 5%. There is no point in setting a figure that requires no effort.

One trick is to relate your target to another variable. Let us assume you convert 10% of your online sales customers to subscribers to your email lists. Mind you, it is more likely to be 9.32% or 11.2% if you have email marketing software, and you should of course. If the current forecast is correct and there is a substantial increase in online sales then you would naturally assume that you will convert 11.2% to subscribers.

This then will be your baseline. If you are going to put resources into hitting your target, and if you are not then there is no point in setting any, you will want some return on it. Work out how much the effort will cost you, taking great care to ensure you include every additional resource, and then work out what return you want for that budget.

It is just a case of calculating how many extra subscribers you need to hit that amount of profit. If you need 7.1% then add that to the 111.2%. And there you have your target. A 19.1% increase. Well let’s round it up.

It is realistic. Anything less is a waste of time, effort and money.