How to create an email marketing campaign
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.
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.
6 Steps to Create a Successful Email Campaign
Six Step Guide to Create a Successful Email Campaign
1. Gather email addresses
The first step towards creating a successful email marketing campaign is to 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 do any of the following steps without having email addresses on your list in the first place.
2. 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.
3. Create personalised campaigns
Once you’ve segmented your audience, you can start to create more personalised campaigns. Building on from that previous example, you’ll be able to send romance books to romance readers and horror books to horror readers. The same concept can be applied across all sorts of other verticals, from fashion to professional services. The key is to make sure that the campaigns are as personalised as possible based on the data that you have on your subscribers.
4. 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. For example, you could send out automated reminders to people a week after they make a purchase to ask them to review the product. You can also 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. It depends on the data that you have on them.
5. 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.
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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.
