As you know, email marketing is a cost-effective and powerful way to market your business. As you might remember, we discussed ways to kick-start your new email marketing campaign just a few blog posts ago.
This time we’re diving in deeper to learn strategies to create actual email marketing campaigns that work. If you are unfamiliar with the process check out our Kick Starter article first!
Here are 5 tips and tricks to “email market” like a pro.
#1 Deciding What Kind of Campaign Works For You
In every email marketing campaign, you need to be intentional about its three major components – email text, email graphic design, and the email list or database. Because you’ve built a robust email list of people, they must be categorized by specific things. For example, those interested in receiving your newsletter might receive a unique email campaign compared to those in your current client list.
Most businesses create email campaigns specific to products, services, segments of customer and their needs, special events, holidays, etc. These are great places to start for your next campaign. Like any form of marketing, it’s best not to put all your eggs in the same basket. You should try a few different types of email campaigns and experience what works best for you. Tip 5 will show you how. Also, make sure you do not bombard the reader with too much at one. Keep the message short, clear, and focused.
#2 Developing Relevant and Effective Email Campaigns
As you start to create a new email marketing campaign, you need to ask yourself some questions to stay on track.
- What’s my target audience?
- Is my campaign seasonal or holiday related?
- Do people on my email list live in countries where those holidays are even celebrated?
- What is the campaign going to promote?
- What are its goals?
- What is the campaign design? Newsletter? Video letter?
Creating a plan before you start will help you generate effective ideas to target your specific audience. You should run through a similar set of questions for all target audiences to make sure your overall and audience-specific goals stay on track.
#3 Campaigning with Simple, Shareable Moments
As your actual email marketing campaign develops, cut out the jargon and buzzwords. Communicating in an open, personable tone is warm and direct and works. Voice your emails in the first person and write clearly.
When your email campaign starts connecting with the people on your list, you want to make sure they can easily share it with their friends and piers. Include easy to use share buttons that allow people to seamlessly forward it to friends or tweet it. If you design your email so people can share pieces of it on social media without clicking through to the content, you can be sure more people will share.
#4 Designing Your Campaign for Mobile
More people use mobile devices to check their emails than ever before. If your email marketing campaign is difficult to access on a tablet or smartphone, you’re going to be losing opportunities to engage and convert people on your list.
Avoid using multiple columns and too many images on your emails. These make it more difficult to load and can completely mess up your formatting. If that happens, people might not be able to clearly read it and will quit it quickly. Emails optimized for mobile should be easy to scan. Keep paragraphs short. Big blocks of text are annoying to read. Another tip is to make sure your emails are in plain text as HTML can take longer to load.
#5 Tracking Your Campaign Metrics
If you’re going through all the trouble of doing your due-diligence research, setting up your email marketing campaign, writing and designing the emails, and sending them out, you need to make sure you invest your time in tracking its results. One metric you must keep track of is the open rate. This tracks how many people actually open up your email. The average is about 20 percent but that depends on your industry. If you find yourself falling below the average, it’s time for an email marketing overhaul. Make sure you are targeting the right audience and your email design is up to par.
Keeping track of your email marketing campaign metrics will help you follow up more effectively. Depending on your email marketing service, you should be able to track individual email campaigns to gauge their effectiveness. Another important measure is click-through rate which measures how many people take the action you want them to take. If you’re not getting people to open emails and they’re not converting, you might have a stale list or perhaps you’re targeting the wrong people.
As you actually start creating your email marketing campaigns, these 5 tips can help you dive deeper. It’s important to invest time in researching your target audience as well as choosing the right campaign platform for you. Don’t put all your eggs in one basic and try different campaigns with different email lists to keep experimenting and learning what works for you.
