Plan out your campaign

Far too often we see people being lured in by the promise of the amazing average ROI that email marketing produces, but don’t actually know how they’re going to achieve it.

Be Objective

Make sure that when you’re planning your campaign that you know exactly what you want from it.  By always baring this in mind you can always revert back to it when decisions have to be made.

Is your campaign to get sales? Drive people to your website? Keep your branding in their mind?  Make sure you know this before any more decisions are made as this is will shape your forthcoming campaign.

Email List Quality

Too many organisations still go for the quick fix and think that a purchased list is the best way to get instant results.  Unfortunately, purchased lists are an expensive waste and can be very damaging to a company’s email marketing efforts.  There is no substitute for your own list of subscribers that have specifically requested your emails; especially if you want to get the ROI that email marketing can achieve.

Keep to your word

Normally, people will be signing up for your emails for a certain reason, and they will expect you to deliver that.  If you have offered “latest offers and last minute deals” as the hook to getting people to subscribe, don’t fill out your email with latest company news.  With email marketing, people don’t have to tolerate irrelevant emails and will remove themselves, so keep to your word.

Make it interesting

It sounds so simple, but so many email marketing campaigns become boring to the subscribers.  Don’t ever feel like you should send out an email every two weeks if you have nothing interesting to say as people will switch off very quickly.  Keep your emails fresh and interesting (if sometimes sporadic), opposed to consistent but stale.

The importance of Email design

An email design can be the deciding factor in whether a subscriber will continue to read your email or will discard it.  Poorly designed emails will cheapen your brand and will do more harm than good. A properly designed email will not only extend your branding correctly, but will also increase conversion rates for your campaign as the layout of your emails and call to action placement plays a significant role in your campaigns success.

Landing Pages

If your email is sales orientated, this is an area that needs as much attention as the campaign itself.  The transition from email to your site should be seamless, and if they’re interested in a product in your campaign, they best be sent to a page which further explains it and gives them the opportunity to progress their interest further.

Don’t forget about subject lines

This is the first point of contact with the recipient and is often an overlooked area.  It doesn’t matter how much effort you have made putting together an amazing looking email with a truly fantastic offer if your recipient isn’t even enticed to open the email.

Subject lines shouldn’t be too long (approx 50 characters max) so that the recipient can read the whole message.  The subject line should describe what’s inside whilst making an effort to encouraging the recipient to open the email.

Timing

This can make a big difference to your campaigns success.  Send it at the wrong time and all your recipients won’t be interested, or won’t have time to read your email and you’ve lost your opportunity.  There is no set special day for what will work for your company (if there was, everyone would do it then) so you will have to find out for yourself what works best.

Think about your target market and when they will most likely be free to actually spend the time with your campaign.  Once you have that in mind, that’s a good place to start.

Test Test Test

There is no set rule to success.  Every company’s mailing list is different and you must constantly test to see what different factors make your recipients react.  Subject line, design, call to action and timing can all be fine tuned by split testing your mailing list and looking at previous results.  If you have any especially successful campaign, work out what might have triggered it and try and replicate it for your next campaign.

This is going to keep carrying on throughout your campaigns life.  No campaign will ever be the perfect campaign.  There will always be room for improvement, and your mailing list will change in habits as time goes on so always re-assess every aspect of your campaign.

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call to action | email design | email marketing campaign | email marketing strategy | newsletter design | unsubscribe link

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