Marketing campaigns are the most effective way of creating brand awareness for your business. These campaigns when run properly can take your business from unknown to popular within a short time. One of the most effective marketing campaigns is e-mail marketing campaigns.
E-mail marketing campaigns are a coordinated set of individual and targeted e-mail messages. These e-mails are sent out at a specific time, to specific people for a specific purpose. In advertising, e-mail marketing is considered as below-the-line marketing.
For smaller businesses, e-mail marketing campaigns can be great way to promote a specific product or service or advertise specials that you have currently.
In this article, we look at e-mail campaigns and how you can conduct your own campaign.
Types of E-mail Marketing Campaigns
There are many types of e-mail marketing campaigns. Some of the most common include:
Promotional E-mail Marketing Campaigns
Promotional e-mail marketing campaigns are created to promote a product, service or event. The emails contain information about what you are promoting. This includes details on the sale, discount or exclusive offer. Also, you can add information about any new products you might have.
Newsletter E-mail Marketing Campaigns
Newsletter e-mail campaigns are a way to keep your subscribers engaged and informed about new products or services, updates, news, and industry trends related to your brand. You can add different types of content onto your newsletter including articles, videos, pictures and blog posts.
Newsletters can be customised to target and reach a specific demographic within your subscriber list based on interests and behaviour.
Onboarding E-mail Marketing Campaigns
Onboarding e-mails are sent to new subscribers to welcome them to the brand and introduce them to its products and services. You can customise these e-mails to include incentives such as discounts or freebies.
When done right, the welcome e-mail can set the tone of the relationship between your brand and the new subscriber.
Abandoned Cart E-mail Marketing Campaigns
These are e-mails you send out to customers who left items in their online shopping carts without purchasing them. These e-mails are there to encourage your customers to finish buying the times. To incentivise your customers to finish their transaction, you can add things such as free delivery or a discount on the items.
Re-engagement E-mail Marketing Campaigns
These e-mail campaigns are there to encourage your inactive subscribers to re-engage with your brand. The e-mails are usually sent out to people who have not opened or engaged with your e-mails in a while. Also, you can send them to people who have cancelled a subscription with your company.
Alternatively, you can use e-mails to find out why someone has not engaged with your brand for a while. This can provide insights into your customers’ preferences in marketing materials.
How to Create a Successful E-mail Marketing Campaign
Now, we will take you through all the steps required to create and run a successful marketing campaign.
Step 1: Develop a Targeted E-mail List for the Campaign
The first thing you need to make this campaign a success, is a list full of qualified leads. This list is full of people who are interested in what you have to offer. You can create this list easily by converting your website visitors or storefront visitors into subscribers.
You will need to develop and send out opt-in forms to get your subscribers and their email addresses. You can experiment with a range of forms, just pick the one that aligns best with your brand and overall campaign. Add the forms to your home page, blog posts and checkout pages. You can also add them to your social media pages.
Step 2: Outline Your Marketing Campaign Goals
If you want to have a strong campaign, you need to set goals for it. You need to think about what you are trying to achieve with the campaign. Consider the following:
- Do you want to welcome new subscribers?
- Are you trying to boost engagement?
- Are you looking to nurture your existing customers?
- Do you want to re-engage inactive subscribers?
- Are you aiming to segment your subscribers so you can send more specific and custom e-mail marketing campaigns?
Once you have answered these questions you will be able to run a campaign that has clear goals. This will help you measure how your campaign is going as you run it.
Step 3: Have a Strong Call to Action (CTA)
Every e-mail you send through the campaign should have a CTA. Typically, CTAs are buttons or linked text that you put in e-mails so customers can click on to subscribe. There are many types of CTAs, including:
Promotional: CTA would be a link to a product page or a coupon code link.
Relational: Used when you are looking to nurture the relationship between your brand and existing subscribers.
Transactional: These CTAs are typically used in e-commerce. They can include order confirmations and sign-up confirmations. Also, they can be used for sending links to track shipments.
A good CTA can help you track the click rate within your email campaign. This can also be used to measure how well your campaign is going.
Step 4: Know Who Your Audience Is
If this is your first e-mail marketing campaign, you will need to know your audience better. You probably already have an idea of who your audience is but its always good to do more research so you can create targeted e-mail content.
You can use platforms like Google Analytics and your social media pages to see various forms of data on your audience. This can include location, interests, race etc.
Step 5: Leverage Technology (Carefully)!
You don’t have to create an email campaign from scratch. You can use e-mail service providers whose tools will help you create a more robust e-mail marketing campaign. When choosing a service provider, look for the following:
- Providers with an easy drag-and-drop campaign creation tool.
- Find a service provider that has automation features, templates and workflows.
- Service provider integration with software that you already uses (WordPress etc).
- Platforms with features that allow you to segment your audience.
- The platform should have in-depth analytics tools on how your e-mail campaign is performing.
For a good e-mail marketing service provider, look at platforms such as MailChimp, Constant Contact and Zoho amongst many others.
Step 6: Plan Your E-mails and E-mail Content
Once you have done your research and gathered your audience data, you can start planning the actual email and its content. Here are a few things to consider:
- How many times you will send your e-mails (frequency).
- What types of e-mails you will be sending.
- What kind of content will be included in the e-mail and which forms of content.
- What you want your subscribers to do on the e-mail (sign-up, clear their carts or become active again).
Additionally, you will need to plan what your subject line will be. The subject line is very important as it will need to grab people’s attention and make them want to open your e-mail. Ensure your subject line is not too long and includes the important details.
Step 7: Write Your Content and Design the E-mail
Now comes the creative and fun part, writing the e-mail content and designing the e-mail. The e-mail design is important because it is the visual presentation of your campaign. If it looks awful, people will not be interested in the content included in the e-mail. Its also important to note that most people read e-mails on their phones, so you have to choose a template that resizes properly according to the device.
Also, your content needs to be optimised to draw in the reader. If you are doing a newsletter e-mail campaign, the news must be relevant to the reader. In e-mail marketing, its important to keep your copy and content concise and hook readers right from the beginning.
It’s always a good idea to address your subscribers by name and use a more casual and friendly tone. Basically, write as if you are talking to the person.
Step 8: Test Your Campaign and Track
Before the excitement of starting the campaign begins, you need to run an A/B test. An A/B test helps you to compare the performance of two versions of content. This helps you see which one appeals more to your readers.You have to test everything from design and layout, e-mail copy, subject lines and CTAs. Also play around with segmenting your audience and different send times.
In terms of tracking, you can easily track how the campaign is doing using analytics from your e-mail marketing provider. The data gathered will help you see what is working and what is not working in your e-mail campaign.
Following these steps will ensure that you create and run a highly successful email campaign. You will be able to develop and execute your marketing campaign and also gather any data that you need.
For any advice on digital marketing, visit SME Advice to speak to one of our experts.
