How to Create an Email Marketing Campaign
We all get them. And we all immediately trash most of them. But there are a select few that I decide to spend time with. I’m talking about newsletter-type mass emails, of course. Such is the game of email marketing. So how do you create an email marketing campaign that gets results? We’ve broken it down to help you understand what needs to go into a solid campaign.
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Define your goals.
Why do you want to send emails to people? What action do you want them to take from reading your e-mail (purchase something? Go to the website to read more? Make an appointment? Create preference for you among a field of competitors?) The more you can carefully craft your goal, the better direction you’ll have when it comes to developing the emails. Note that a primary goal is NOT to build awareness. Simply sending the email out to people builds awareness automatically. Use your time with your audience to say something that speaks to them.
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Define your audience.
Who are the people who interact with your brand? Or, if you’d like to develop a new audience, what do those people look like? What’s their age, gender, education level, household income, brand loyalty . . . anything that speaks to the demographics of your audience and, ideally, the psychographics as well, will help define the voice you use in your messaging.
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Build your list.
The important factor in this is to make certain you have permission to contact this person for marketing purposes. Even if they’ve provided their information to you in your store or at your office, make sure that somewhere it clearly states how their email will be used. If they haven’t given permission to use it for marketing purposes, then please comply. Angry customers can be mortal enemies if their privacy isn’t respected.
Leverage your website to build your database. This is an audience that has already sought you out and is spending time on your site. Make this opportunity count by getting them to sign up for a newsletter. Many sites, such as MailChimp, offer plug-ins that can be integrated into your website to capture that audience.
On a related note to this, particularly for any hand-written sign-up forms, make triple sure that you have the emails spelled correctly when you enter them into the database. If the email address is wrong, the email won’t get delivered and you’ll get a “bounce back” on it. Too many bounce-backs, and your account will be shut off as the email service will think you’re sending out spammy emails to rented lists.
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Determine your content.
What new product is coming out? What events do you have coming up? For tips on increasing your response rate, we have some advice here on how to write effective subject lines.
- Keep it short
- Keep it useful
- Keep it aligned with the voice of the brand (if you’re a financial investment company you probably want it professional; if you’re a trendy store, you probably want a language that’s more casual and irreverent)
- Avoid anything that comes across as a hard sales pitch.
- Keep it short (it’s worth saying again . . . if readers have to scroll to read the entire thing, they probably won’t make it to the end)
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Determine your frequency
You most definitely want to avoid multiple emails a day, and probably even daily emails, but once a week or every couple of weeks is sufficient. It really depends on your brand or product. Do you launch new products weekly? Monthly? Seasonally? If there’s more than 3-4 weeks in between product launches, consider sending an email once a month, at a minimum, to keep your name out there and your audience engaged with your brand. In this day and age, out of sight is out of mind. We’ve offered up some tips here.
For more help, you can check out a guide from MailChimp here.
For help setting up your campaign, building an audience, or creating custom email templates for you, just send us an email or give us a call.
