As any digital marketing expert will tell you, one of the most effective methods of reaching the desired audience and increasing organic website traffic is through the execution of a successful email marketing campaign.
If planned and maintained correctly, a successful email campaign can become a key element in an overall digital marketing strategy.
In order to make an Email campaign tick, one must follow 10 essential guidelines to ensure every aspect of the campaign runs smoothly and effectively.
Just like a builder wouldn’t dream of building a house without first laying down a foundation a digital marketing team definitely wouldn’t launch an email campaign without having a proper plan in place.
After the initial strategy is devised it is now time to set the target audience by conducting market research, assessing the customer’s needs and creating a profile of the specific demographic you feel may be interested in your product or service by doing this you can save time, resources and money while attracting the right traffic towards your website.
It is important to do your homework with this, for instance, a life insurance company would hardly direct an email campaign at an under-50 demographic nor would a sportswear retailer direct a campaign at an over 35 demographic meaning you must always customize to the product or service at hand.
At this stage, you have the strategy in place and the audience profile built so now it’s time to create your email list.
This can be done in a number of ways, one is by a subscription service by signing up via the company website, also utilising social media is another way to encourage people to sign up.
Alternatively, you can use a third-party resource such as MailChimp which provides paid mailing lists which save a lot of time and work for a nominal fee, this would be more suitable and effective for a larger company looking to branch out into the tens of thousands mark.
Try and capture the imagination of the audience here, nobody wants to see another spammy-looking generic email popping up in their inbox, providing a title that makes an email too irresistible for a person NOT to open gives a huge call to action advantage.
For instance, a department store promoting an upcoming sale using a title like “ SUPER SIZZLING SUMMER SALE COMING SOON. IT’S TOO HOT TO MISS!!” would command the interest of a potential customer straight away.
There’s no point in creating a beautifully crafted email without having a landing page for the audience to visit upon opening.
Make sure to create and provide links to a subscription form (with a subsequent thank you form!) along with a website landing page that provides more in-depth details of what you’re promoting or selling, Do this correctly and watch those conversion rates soar!
Now we come to social media, it’s like Marmite, some love it, some hate it but the facts are it has become CRUCIAL in all aspects of digital marketing with email marketing being no different, combining both can be a match made in heaven as it gives potential to
A lot of clothing catalogues and retailers use this to great effect, Topman is a prime example of this with an array of social media sharing buttons and links positioned at the footer of their email templates.
There’s nothing worse than opening up your inbox to find a litany of repetitive annoying emails from the same source, people don’t like to be harassed and have a product or service forced upon them even if they have subscribed so in that respect keep it subtle.
Distributing twice-weekly emails would more than suffice, this way you’re seen to be engaging yet not too overbearing, keep the content consistent and relevant to the product and try to change the email template regularly, people won’t open something they feel they have seen before!
Recent studies show that over 65% of people use their mobile devices to check their email inbox at some point this figure is also growing rapidly, keeping this in mind it is absolutely essential that you make your email template mobile responsive.
The bottom line is if your emails don’t fit on their screens they certainly won’t go to the trouble to read them!.
You can either do this yourself, recruit a web designer or use resources such as MailChimp which will provide this service, it’s well worth the cost!
A major stumbling block toward successful conversion rates is the refusal of people to provide personal details about themselves.
Unfortunately with all the good, the internet provides there’s also a dark side with people out there determined to exploit anyone or anything for their personal profit with spam emails being a major part of their methods, this In turn creates an element of suspicion from people about providing personal details online.
To alleviate these fears you must present a clear and recognised privacy policy statement within your emails which explains the intended use of this information and the promise of non-disclosure to any third parties, this statement can be included in the T&Cs.
Now you have everything set up and everything’s ready to go…well nearly, at this stage it’s time to test the effectiveness of your emails by using A/B split testing, by splitting your first test between two specific segments of your audience:
This should be done over the course of a number of days. This allows you to gauge the feedback in real-time and decide where to apply changes if needed, afterwards you should send out the winning test to 60% of your audience to get a final idea of how well-received your emails were.
Social Media vs. Email Marketing: When to Use Each
By Matrix Internet
By Irene Hislop