Creating an Effective Email Campaign
An effective email campaign increases customer loyalty and helps convert leads. For the email campaign to be successful, there must be a marketing strategy in place.
Establish rapport with the potential client
One of the first steps to ensuring email subscribers remain loyal and don’t unsubscribe is to forge a relationship with them.
An introduction email is the perfect way to introduce the reader to the brand and confirm their email subscription. From there, a follow-up email could be sent a couple of days later that details what type of content they can expect in the future.
Know the audience
Even the most well-written email won’t appeal to every consumer out there. That’s why it’s so important to understand the target audience (Growing and Engaging an Audience).
Conversions only happen when the target audience receives content they want to see. When disconnected content hits the wrong audience, open rate suffers.
Matching email content with the audience takes time and effort. The necessary details can be found through tactics like:
- Pay attention to the data
- Pay attention to what competitors (Competitor research) are doing
- Customers survey/feedback
- Using market trends within a geographical location
- Tracking customers’ past purchases
- Studying customers’ purchase frequency
- Trial and error
Grow Your List: Subscriptions, free giveaways, and free estimates
Growing the email list should always remain a top priority. After all, no matter how well put together the emails are, if there aren’t many people signed up for them then the campaign will struggle to reach any set benchmarks. Consider your email list one of your very most important assets. So keep it fresh, growing, and engaged.
Lead magnets can help make a list grow fast. A lead magnet is a compelling offer that’s given away for free in exchange for the person’s email address.
A lead magnet can be a wide variety of offers, so long as it adds value to the potential subscriber. A few examples include:
- ebooks
- Checklists
- Infographics
- White papers
- Webinars
- Free consultation
- Free trial or sample
Segments and groups
Segmentation is when email subscribers are divided into smaller segments. By segmenting people into different lists, emails become more tailored to that list’s interests to deliver more relevant material. You will really need a program such as Autopilot or any email marketing software that allows for advanced segmentation.
It’s less effective for a business to put in minimal effort and send the same mass email to all of its subscribers – experience and customization is key. When a subscriber’s inbox fills up with emails that they have no desire to read, the majority of those subscribers will ultimately end up deleting the email without even reading it and unsubscribing.
There are several different criteria that can be used to segment email lists:
- Geographic: People are segmented into lists based on their geographic location. This is handy if a promotion is being offered at a specific brick-and-mortar store location or if an event is being hosted at a particular spot.
- Content: This type of segment requires data that’s been collected based on the activity of the contact. What did they purchase? What pages did they visit on the website? Did they download anything?
- Behavior: Segmenting contacts based on their behaviors is going a level deeper beyond content-specific. This type of segmentation requires even more detailed data. How long did the customer stay on a particular site page? How often do they visit the site? Do they load items and abandon the online cart often?
Think about content and the message to convey
To have effective email copy, the goal of the copy and the target audience need to be known first. From there, craft compelling email copy that offers value to the reader. It should cover topics that interest the intended audience.
A few tips to keep in mind for persuasive email copy include:
- Write in a conversational tone
- Tell a story
- Show personality
- Use short paragraphs and bullet points where possible to break up the copy
Establish sending frequency and goals
Decide how often emails are to be sent to different subscriber lists (there are different schools of thought i.e. 12-touch system+). Certain subscribers might be more invested in receiving more frequent content, while other subscribers might become annoyed by regular emails and unsubscribe. This is where understanding the target audience helps and paying attention to your email analytics.
Reminder: Whether emails are sent as daily updates or go out only twice a month, check the analytics to monitor activity. High unsubscribe rates or poor click-through rates might be a sign that some adjusting is in order.
Meeting certain metrics (Metrics and performance) should also be set as a goal for each email, as well as the overall campaign. Whether it’s open rates or bounce rates or some other metric, decide exactly what goal is to be accomplished with the email. This will, in turn, also help to keep the email more focused.
Make an email marketing schedule
Consistency is key to ensuring any email marketing campaign is successful. That’s where following a marketing schedule comes into play.
A marketing schedule is a vital tool that can help plan, schedule, and organize the delivery dates of content. A marketing schedule will assist in keeping the overall strategy on track.
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