Email Campaign Strategies for Beginners

Despite the rise of social media and other digital marketing channels, email is still one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience. Email is 40 times more likely to acquire new customers than Facebook or Twitter.

Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your customers and build relationships with them. However, crafting effective email campaigns can be tricky. If you’re just starting, this guide will give you all the information you need to create successful email campaigns that will engage and convert your readers.

Creating Your Email Campaign

Creating an email marketing campaign is one of the simpler marketing methods. It’s straightforward to set up. We’ll discuss some steps you should complete to set up your new campaign. 

While it should be obvious, you can only accomplish the following with a list of customers. Building an email list is time-consuming, and buying an email list from another company might feel more manageable. Don’t. A purchased list may meet your target audience’s needs, but it won’t ensure a high level of engagement. Instead, build your list organically through sources:

• Contacts with email accounts
• Contact management systems
• Requests for new emails via your website or social media
• Customer relationship management software
• Any existing email list you may already have

Step One: Defining your email campaign goal

Before crafting your message, you need to determine your campaign’s goal. For example, do you want to increase sales, promote a product, request donations, or drive traffic to your website? Each of these will require different decisions along the way.

With a clear goal in mind, you can move on to the next step of creating your marketing campaign. 

Step Two: Picking your Email Service

Several email marketing services are available to help create and distribute your message to your customers. While most can handle each type of marketing message you may have, some are better at meeting your particular needs and goals for your business. We will discuss how to choose your email marketing service later in this article.

 Step Three: Segment Your List

By segmenting your email list, you can send targeted emails to your clients based on qualities such as demographic information or interests. Segmentation ensures that you send marketing messages to the audience it is most relevant.

Some of the typical email marketing segmentations include:

• Buyer behavior
• Demographics
• Email engagement
• Past purchase
• Geography
• Expressed interest

It is okay if names in your list end up in multiple segments. However, make sure that you choose the appropriate segmentation to send.

Step Four: Craft Your Message and Layout

Your marketing message should be as straightforward as possible. However, there is a better time to get creative to confuse your recipients. Most email marketing services offer a variety of templates that will help you build the message you want viewers to see in a layout that will catch their attention and hopefully compel them to take action.

Step Five: Enable Analytics

The only way you will understand your campaign’s effectiveness is to enable analytics. The different metrics in these analyses can help you determine how many customers engaged with your message, where you need to improve, and more.

Some of the key metrics to track include:

• Email open rate
• Click-through rate
• Bounce rate
• Unsubscribe rates

Reviewing these analytics metrics monthly lets you tweak your email marketing strategy to improve open and conversion rates.

Choosing an Email Service

There are several email marketing services available. Choosing which would work best for your company can take time and effort with many options. However, there are some things to remember when reviewing your email service options.

Your Needs and Goals

What do you want your email campaigns to accomplish, and what do you need from a provider? Some companies need an email service provider that offers full-featured services and helps with marketing messages from beginning to end. If you need a provider to help you segment your contact list, there are options too. When you know your needs from a provider, you are better equipped to pick the appropriate service provider.

While you define your needs, you should also specify the goals of your campaigns. You can determine the plan for each campaign or choose to have an overall email marketing goal. Combine those goals with your business needs, and you can pick an appropriate email service provider.

Scalability

You want to add new customers to your list as your business grows. You need a scalable service provider to help your email marketing efforts grow. Most email service providers offer tiered pricing plans that allow you to scale your marketing lists up and down.

Email Marketing Campaign Tips

To make your email campaigns successful, we’ve compiled a short list of things you can do. These tips will help you cultivate your customer list and run successful campaigns.

• Be Personable: make your customers feel like each email is personally sent just for them. Use their name if you are going for a level of familiarity and friendliness, and make it more from the owner than the company.
• Focus on Benefits: Customers care about features but less than they do about how your products and services will benefit them. Use your subject line to highlight one or two of these benefits.
• Be concise: Keep your message straightforward. You don’t want your message to take more than two or three minutes to read. The more concise your content is, the more likely it is to get read.

Don’t forget to add a call to action in your email content. If you don’t, your customers won’t understand what you want them to do with the information they’ve just received.

By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to creating successful email marketing campaigns that engage your subscribers and drive business results. Contact me today, and I will help you craft the perfect email marketing campaign for your business.