Emails are a widely used form of communication. Email marketing, landing directly into inboxes of your target audience, is an excellent marketing tool. It can help you build brand awareness, grow customer relationships, and generate more leads and sales. If you do it right. Learn best practices for creating an awesome email marketing campaign by reading on.
The Definition of an Email Campaign
An email campaign is part of your company’s marketing efforts that reaches your email subscribers. You are able to deliver ads, ask for business, request donations, and more. Campaigns are generally designed to reach your subscribers with your valuable content at optimal times. These also allow your brand to nurture relationships and trust.
Most people prefer opt-in based emails, as opposed to cold emails. Here’s what the two mean:
- Opt-in: Your receiver willingly gave up their email address in exchange for getting regular emails, offers, free trials, etc. from your brand.
- Cold Emails: These users have probably never heard of you. With cold emails, you want to craft an email that will compel the stranger to become a new friend.
How To Create Your Email Campaign
Having a plan based on your campaign goals will help guide you through your campaign creation.
- Set goals: What are you hoping to achieve from your email campaign? Grow brand awareness? Direct traffic to podcasts, blogs, or social channels? Advertising new deals?
- Choose a platform: There are eleventy-billion out there so it depends on what features you’re looking for. We like MailChimp because it’s very user-friendly.
- Grow your targeted email list: You can have an audience made up of subscribers and imported contacts, which are all considered qualified leads.
- Segment your list: This allows you to target different types of emails based on the way you’ve segmented your audience. We segment our list based on the welcome campaign. New subscribers go into the email 1 segment, email 2, and so on.
- Use an email template: For consistency, a template that has your logo and branded images is best practice.
- Good writing is important: From your subject through the body of the email, what you say and how you say it matters. Check spelling, grammar, and flow. The writing doesn’t have to be great, it just has to be good.
- Always personalize: To whom it may concern doesn’t fly, and users will send you to the trash. Or worse…spam.
- A/B Test your lists: Within your segments, test different subject lines. Or, switch up the body copy. A/B tests allow you to see what type of messaging, time of day, or day of the week perform best.
Why Are Email Campaigns Important
Emails are a point of contact that allows you to build relationships with potential fans in order to create loyal customers. By sending emails, you’re capturing your customer’s attention directly in their inbox.
If your email campaign works the way you’re hoping, it will attract and retain existing customers. Plus, it will attract and retain potential customers that have opted in to receive your emails. It’s all about nurturing these relationships so they can blossom and grow, and email is one of the most effective ways to do that.
A 2014 McKinsey Report showed email marketing was 40x’s more effective at bringing in new customers. Organic content was the only marketing more effective.
What Makes An Email Campaign Effective
To run an effective email campaign, you need certain elements in place.
- An attractive, branded email template
- A compelling subject line. Test yours on this tool from CoSchedule!
- A well-written summary, which is the content the recipient sees before opening the email.
- Convincing body text that includes your company logo. You should have no more than around 20 lines of content, and up to three images.
- A clear call-to-action (CTA) letting the reader know what you’d like them to do next. Click a link, watch a video, make a purchase, etc. It all depends on what your ask is for that email.
- Your email footer should include your contact information, where to find you on social, and an unsubscribe option.
Types of Email Campaigns
There are so many types of email campaigns that could fit your goals. We’ve got a list of the popular ones here.
- Welcome emails: Generally sent to new email list subscribers.
- Holidays: Offers discounts for, and/or acknowledges holidays.
- Birthdays: If you are able to capture birthdates, a little e-card is a nice touch.
- Invitations: Promotes such things as online webinars or in-store events.
- Cross-selling: If you know a customer bought a product, then these emails are sent to sell related items.
- Anniversary: Reward your customers for your company anniversary.
- Newsletters: Builds customer relationships with goodwill content providing valuable information.
- Announcements: To promote visits, upcoming sales, specials, events, etc.
- Nurture campaigns: Keep existing subscribers enthralled by adding value to their inbox.
Measuring Your Email Campaign’s Success
To understand how well your email campaign performed, there are three different metrics to pay attention to.
- Delivery rates: From your email list, how many emails delivered right to the inbox and didn’t end up in a spam filter. The more delivered to the inbox, the healthier your subscriber list is.
- Open rates: If you sent out 1,000 emails, and only 10 emails were opened, then you know you need to work on a better way to capture your recipient’s attention. This is why your subject line is highly important to the success of your campaign.
- Click through rates: Out of all those opened emails, how many recipients performed the call-to-action? Did they click links?
- Revenue and conversion rates per email: Revenue is only relevant if you have a product you’re selling. Conversion rates measure how many of those email recipients convert to customers.
In conclusion, email is uber important to your digital marketing campaign. Now that you know the basics, go forth and send emails! If you need help setting up an email campaign, Adapt Studios is here for you.