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Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools that digital marketers have on offer to them, allowing them to build an owned marketing resource that they can use to sell their products and services again and again.
The stats and studies show us just how powerful email marketing can be. For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42. Customers want to hear from their favourite brands, too. 49% of consumers say that they’d like to receive promotional emails from their favourite brands on a weekly basis.
But what are the best ways to create an email marketing campaign and where can you get started? Good question. Let’s take a look.
What to Do Before Launching Your Email Campaign
Before officially kickstarting your email marketing campaign, you’ll want to make sure you take care of some foundational work. This can be boiled down to three simple steps:
- Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform
- Nowadays, there are many advanced platforms that take the power of email marketing to the next level. This is an area where you don’t want to skimp on budget. It’s well worth investing in an email platform with the most advanced features and capabilities. You’ll make your money back very quickly…and then some.
- Nowadays, there are many advanced platforms that take the power of email marketing to the next level. This is an area where you don’t want to skimp on budget. It’s well worth investing in an email platform with the most advanced features and capabilities. You’ll make your money back very quickly…and then some.
- Gather Your Target Email Addresses
- Next, gather email addresses for the people that you want to contact. There are different ways to do this, but one of the most common ways is to offer up some sort of free content, like an ebook or a webinar, in exchange for people sharing their name and email address. However you do it, you can’t have a successful campaign without having email addresses on your list in the first place.
- Next, gather email addresses for the people that you want to contact. There are different ways to do this, but one of the most common ways is to offer up some sort of free content, like an ebook or a webinar, in exchange for people sharing their name and email address. However you do it, you can’t have a successful campaign without having email addresses on your list in the first place.
- Segment Your Audience
- If you’re able to gather additional information on your email subscribers, you’ll be able to store that data and build campaigns based around it. Amazon does a great job of this, which is why email marketing leads to so many sales on their platform. If you were building a competing bookshop, you might track whether people were clicking on romance books, fantasy books or horror books. You could then create segments within your overall email list to provide better targeting options.
Shaping Your Email Marketing Campaign
Now that you’ve laid the groundwork for your campaign, you can start building out and launching the campaign itself. Once you have your platform of choice, and your list of target emails, the next step is obvious: write compelling emails. Some proven options for email style include:
- Problem & Solution: focusing on the pain the prospect may be experiencing and how you can help
- Story-based: using narrative to engage readers and hold their attention throughout
- Contrarian: taking an unexpected position to attract interest
- News-based: leveraging topical events to attract opens, reads, and clicks
Once you’ve written templates for your core email styles, you can begin shaping personalized campaigns. This will help you turn your campaign into a more personal, impactful strategy as you begin marketing to specific customers in individualized ways. Utilize the data you have on your subscribers to fuel the personalization strategy.
Managing Your Email Marketing Campaign After Launch
So, now you have a segmented audience, email templates, and ideas for personalised outreach efforts. It’s now time to fully launch the campaign after shift into management mode. Here’s how that’s done:
- Deploy Automation
- Automation is one of the most powerful tools that email marketers have access to, because it allows them to create campaigns that are sent automatically when certain triggers are met. Send out automated reminders to people a week after they make a purchase to ask them to review the product. Set up automations that are triggered by other types of behaviour, such as an email subscriber visiting a certain section of your website or even when it’s a subscriber’s birthday. Shape the automation to fit the needs of your campaign.
- Automation is one of the most powerful tools that email marketers have access to, because it allows them to create campaigns that are sent automatically when certain triggers are met. Send out automated reminders to people a week after they make a purchase to ask them to review the product. Set up automations that are triggered by other types of behaviour, such as an email subscriber visiting a certain section of your website or even when it’s a subscriber’s birthday. Shape the automation to fit the needs of your campaign.
- Manage Your Email List
Your email list is a valuable asset you need to tend to with care. Good email management includes: cleaning your list to remove undeliverable addresses and people who never open messages, segmenting your audience according to their interest in particular products or services, and managing campaigns to ensure you hit the ‘Goldilocks’ spot—mailing them enough to maximize profits, but not too often.
- Test Everything
Simply changing a word or two in your email subject lines can profoundly impact open rates—and, therefore, your sales. This shows the power of simple A/B testing, where you test variations to see which performs best. There are many different parameters to test, any one of which could yield you a big win. As a minimum, you should be split-testing: subject lines, from names, body copy, CTAs, preview text, and text versus HTML emails.
- Maximize Deliverability
There’s no point in sending emails if the recipients never see them. This makes optimizing deliverability crucial to long-term success. In a world drowning in spam, getting your emails through to the inbox safely is a considerable challenge. You must check that your email system is set up correctly, ticking all the boxes for technical matters such as DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. You also need to take care in writing the emails to ensure you don’t trigger spam filters. Overall, you need to manage your email reputation carefully, so you continue to achieve high email deliverability rates.
- Check Analytics
- One of the great things about email marketing is that it’s all so inherently measurable. Whichever email platform that you use will provide you with data that shows exactly what people are doing when they receive your emails. You can look at everything from open rates and the number of clicks to how many of the emails are bouncing. This can then provide you with powerful insights that influence the way you run your campaigns.
How Much Does Email Marketing Cost?
This question is one of those “how long is a piece of string” questions, and it also depends upon a variety of different variables. For example, the larger your email list is, the more you’re going to have to spend to send your emails. Some providers allow you to use them for free up to a certain number of recipient.
You also need to consider the associated writing and design costs for actually creating your emails, as well as how much it will cost for you to capture email addresses in the first place. All told, you’re going to want to dedicate around 10% of your marketing spend on email marketing and building your list.
Why is Email Marketing Important for Business?
Email marketing, on average, generates between $35 and $45 for every $1 spent. If you have an agency running your email marketing, your costs are going to start around $3,000, but with an ROI like that, the cost is more than worth it. On top of that, there are five major reasons why an email marketing campaign is a good idea for most businesses:
- Everyone uses email
- Most people like receiving promotional emails
- Email campaigns allow for many touchpoints in a short time period
- Simple A/B testing
- Easy personalization at scale
Boost Your Business Utilizing These Email Marketing Campaign Strategies
Now that you understand how to shape, launch, and manage your email marketing campaign, you’re ready to help your business grow and reach more customers. If you need help finding the right email marketing partner, CJAM is here to connect you. Simply schedule a free consultation today, and we’ll work to find you the right partner for your specific needs.
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6. Run tests
Once you’ve started to gather baseline data about the way that your email campaigns are performing, you can take things to the next level by running tests. You can trial two different versions of your subject lines to see which ones perform the best, or you can experiment with sending your emails at different times to see how that affects open rates and conversions. Set up your tests, monitor the data that comes in and then use that to make decisions about future campaigns.
How would you track visitors coming from an email or newsletter campaign?
Building on from that last point, you might be wondering how you can keep track of people who read and click links in your newsletter campaigns. It all comes down to the use of analytics.
Every email marketing provider offers some form of analytical data, typically showing you how many people opened your emails and how many times your links were clicked, as well as how often people are unsubscribing.
But that only shows you one side of the story, and so you’ll also want to install an analytical suite like Google Analytics on your website. When you combine this with the use of UTM parameters, you’ll be able to see exactly what people are doing when they come from an email or newsletter campaign.
Conclusion
Now that you know the basics of email marketing, you’re ready to create your first campaign. Much of the process is self-explanatory, but if you find yourself struggling then you can also find yourself some help.
The good news is that if you’re looking for an agency that can help you to bring your email marketing campaigns to life, we can help you to pick out the provider that’s right for you. Reach out to us today to find out more.
