When you have a firm goal of what you want from your campaign, everything else will fit together because as soon as you come across a dilemma in your campaign creation, you can always revert back to that question.

With that in mind, I have been seeing too many emails recently that have tried to pack too much in.  When this occurs, the user can be drawn away from the intended goal of the email and instead lose interest by scanning the other areas of the email.

It’s believed that on average a person reads an email newsletter for 51 seconds.  A lot of these people skim read the email and just look at the overall messages of the email.  Now I don’t know about you but when I skim read I don’t really take it in, I tend to just see what I’m interested in and then click through.  Obviously this is where a decent use of call to action buttons, cleverly placed, comes in handy but what if you have conflicting goals in the same newsletter?

So for instance, you start off the newsletter with an offer that I find interesting and I think that I will have a look at it, but first I’m going to look through the rest of the newsletter.  As I scan down, I see another offer that I’m also interested in and decide to click on that and then spend my time looking through the details for that.  When I’m done, I close down the email and forget about the initial product.

Because of the conflicting offers within the newsletter, you’ve lost the impact of one of your products.

There are of course ways to plan around this.

Firstly, you could cut down the messages in the email.  A personal favourite of mine for doing this is the H&M newsletter who keep their messages very minimal.  They will send out an email with only one topic in and makes sure that the message gets through to the recipient.

If you are looking to adopt this idea, you may then be inclined to increase frequency so as to still get all your offers/products noticed.  Just remember, if you are considering that to not start barraging them with marketing messages as your overall marketing messages will become weaker as they begin to turn off.

This method though will allow for more concentrated subject lines.  You will have room to be more specific and though you may see a decrease in opens, it may only be because the recipient isn’t interested in that particular offer.  What you may see though is an increase in the click throughs of your campaign as the people who are opening it will be more interested as the whole campaign will be of similar relevance.

If you are cautious to carry out this technique then you could take an alternative, landing page option. 

Landing pages are something I have covered recently and can have a positive effect on the conversions from your recipients list by directing them exactly where they want to go and cutting out the extra noise and distractions that can occur by just directing them to the home page of the site. 

Though this won’t necessarily eliminate the problem I outlined, it may help in keeping the customers concentration focused on the products they were interested in.

Open rates looking good?  Click throughs’ quite high?  Still wondering why you’re not converting enough of these into sales?  It might be worth assessing the landing page.

One of the main goals in email marketing is to drive people onto the site.  Whilst the email side will do the leg work and entice people to your site, you must make sure that the landing page delivers what the email promises and not just confuse the recipient, or as they should really be called now, potential customer.

I say potential customer as they are genuinely interested in the product/service you have offered and are looking further into it; this is where the landing page enters the equation.

If you have offered your customer a certain product in the email, the last thing they want is to be taken to the home page of your site.  They want to view that particular product in greater detail.

To give you a helping hand, use the following list as a checklist for your own landing pages:

Is the product/service/article that they clicked on in the email on the landing page?

Does this look interesting enough to spend more time here and look around?

Now if you look further into the landing page itself, and depending on what you are offering, does it clearly answer these questions from your now potential customers:

How do I learn more about this?

What if I have more questions?

As an example, let’s take a landing page from the newsletter we regularly send out.  We advertise our template design services in these newsletters and link through the page to here.

If you go through the checklist I’ve outlined you’ll see that everything is there that a potential customer could need to learn more, and ultimately, sign up.

This leads me nicely onto the final point.  Though we want our potential customers to learn as much about our system as possible, our main goal is to get them to take on a trial or sign up.  If you take another look at the site, you will see how we’ve made that a priority.  When creating your landing pages, make sure that you still keep your main goal in mind and make that the nucleus of your landing page planning.  As long as you keep that in mind, your landing page should piece together very nicely.

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.

Now, I can hold my hand up and admit that I may have spent too much time getting obsessed with the strategic side of email marketing and not offering some more inspiration for creativity.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a well thought about and well maintained email marketing campaign can really work wonders for you.  The problem lies in the fact that more and more companies are taking on email marketing and soon enough there will be many well maintained email marketing campaigns and yours will not be standing out from that crowd as much.

As well as having a stand out campaign, the main goal in todays climate is to not only grow the recipient list but to make sure that these recipients are attentive to your messages.  With that in mind I started to think about email campaigns and the holy grail of viral-ability (yes, I have just made that up, but if Ian Dowie can do it….).

In a previous post I pointed out how H&M had exceeded my expectations by giving me a £10 voucher when I signed up, which I then subsequently told my friends about who also signed up.  Though this was an expensive technique that most companies can’t really afford, the idea of it is still worth some heavy thought. 

Yes, I know, it’s easier said than done but if you can get something that has that forwarding on effect, you can guarantee yourself some serious, cheap exposure.

You have your usual just for laughs viral campaign that will guarantee forwarding during those long office hours (such as reggae irie name generator). 

But it doesn’t have to just be the usual type of viral campaign.  The H&M one was just such a good offer, it would be rude not to tell your friends about free money.  Another great example of this is from one of our own customers, The Urban Shop. They offer 15% off to anyone who forwards the email to their friends, plus another 10% for the person who gets the forwarded message.  Both people benefit from the forward whilst at the same time encouraging the recipient to sign up to the list to receive greater discount in the future.

Another thing you’ll have to remember is to not leave it to the customer to forward this email on.  Treat the link like you would a call-to-action (which it is really), and make sure that a well-placed forward button is present for them to click on.

So when you’re next creating an email make sure that you think long and hard about your forward link, it could be a fantastic way to not only re-ignite or maintain your recipients interest in your campaign, but may prove to be a successful way to increase your mailing list size in the process.

Useful Related Articles:

BeRelevant: How To Make Your Email Marketing Campaign Stand Out From The Rest

No Man is an iland: Take a design risk and get animated? I was dubious about this idea until I read the post and then was left with a head-nodding hmmm at the end

So many companies come into email marketing hoping for a quick fix that will boost their sales and then very quickly stop the email campaign as they put no real thought into their emails. 

Whats the Objective of Your Campaign?

Probably the best thing to start off with is assessing what your overall plan is with this campaign.  Are you looking to increase sales? Build your brand up? Keep users in touch with latest happenings?

Once decided, you will be able to make better decisions for your campaign.  For instance, if your main goal is to increase sales, probably best to keep the latest developments in your company to a minimum and focus on the main goal.

Design and Layout

This can make the difference from someone opening your campaign, to clicking through to your website and making a purchase.  The first thing a recipient will see is the design of the email as they open it and as we all know, we make quick judgements.  If you send a poorly designed email that looks quite amateurish, then your recipients will see this as that. 

Remember that it is quite likely that these recipients get quite a few promotional emails, some from well-respected companies with good quality emails and yours must be comparable to them for your campaign to work.

The layout of your campaign can also determine how successful your campaign is.  You must make sure that if there is something you particularly want them to click on, that it is clear and obvious for them to click on.  This is otherwise known as the call to action.

Call to Action

Making your call to action prominent in the email is something that shouldn’t be an afterthought in your designing process.  This small part of the design process is also a major factor in your conversion rate, so put a lot of thought into how you want it to look and be placed.  You can try different methods, wording, graphics to get the most out of it.

Subject Line

Obviously this design thought will all be pointless if no-one is opening the email in the first place.  The subject line should be encouraging opens whilst at the same time summarising what is in the email itself.  Try and remember not to make it too long as you want your message to get across to your recipients without it truncating.  Try experimenting with your subject lines to see what factors change open rates.

Experimenting

There really is no definitive formula to making your campaign a success as every industry and recipient is different.  Though you can get the best practices in place, this may not necessarily mean you get instantly high responses.  The best thing to do is experiment with all aspects of your campaign and see which works best.  One of the most common methods is A/B split testing.  This way you can view for yourself which factors are working and which aren’t.  By experimenting for yourself, you’ll be guaranteed a happy and prosperous future in email marketing.