As someone who works for an ESP, I see a lot of customers come in and start their campaigns completely on the wrong foot.

I’ve offered out a bit of advice over my time on how to improve your email campaign from the start so thought I’d offer some tips to all of you now.

What do you want from the campaign?

The first thing to do is actually think about what you want from the campaign.  Is this the sort of company which is just updating people on their latest movements?  Are you trying to drive people to your site?  Are you looking to get sales from your campaign. 

With a clear idea in your head on what you want, you can soon start to map out how your email marketing campaign is going to work.  A vital ingredient to a successful campaign.

What do YOU like to receive in your inbox?

Now the best thing here is not to even think about it.  Just try to catch yourself out now and again when you realise you’ve opened an email or purchased on the basis of an email.

What exactly made you open that email/click that link/purchase that item.  Once you’ve worked that out, you’ll start to understand what makes the general public tick.

Where did you get the mailing list from?

This is quite important on how to start the campaign off really.  If you have a bought list, the chances are they won’t be expecting your email so you’re going to have to offer them something special to ensure you have their attention. 

Always bare in mind that Spam is unwanted emails as well as unsolicited emails so you may have a perfectly legitimate list but you will still run the risk of being marked as spam if you just send them an irrelevant mail.

If you have self built the list you must ask yourself other questions.  How did you compile the list?  If they signed up from your website, then what incentive or promise did you give them to sign up?  Make sure you keep to this promise.

If you have a self built list but it is compiled from addresses collected from a while ago, and you haven’t mailed them for a considerable amount of time, you will have to make sure you tread carefully as well.  Depending on how long ago it was, your recipients may have forgotten about your business and then you land in the unwanted email list.  Make sure your campaign accommodates this thought to try and gain their attention again.

Don’t expect instant success

So many people hear about how great the ROI is in email marketing and just think “I’ll have a bit of that” and instantly think that each person gets those figures.  Now obviously those figures are achievable but only if you put in the work to achieve it.

If the campaign doesn’t do well you have to start asking yourself why it hasn’t worked and not just give up.

Find an article on how to see where it has gone wrong here

Be Innovative

Remember that you’re fighting for attention with a lot of other emails in your recipients’ inbox, so the best thing to do is to try and think of something a bit different for your campaign (I know, I know – easier said than done). 

But for example, a customer of ours used email marketing in a great way to promote his company, a local pub.  He collected his customers work email addresses and emailed on a mid to late week with what was happening that weekend at the pub.  Sent out new menus’ and even offered a small pub quiz in the emails to keep an interest in the campaign he was doing.

By encouraging interaction as well as sending out his promotional messages he managed to have a fully active recipient list to send out his messages.

So there you have it.  Hopefully this has encouraged you to think about your own campaigns and maybe even inspired you to try out something different.  The rest of this blog is also here to offer you helpful tips about all areas of email marketing so have a look around if you’re new.

Tags

email marketing campaign | email marketing strategy

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